When the article first appeared, I followed the link to the web site with the idea of maybe buying one of these things - but, like you, worked out that for a similar price, the Eee will do more.
I used to own a GP-32 as well as a Gameboy Advance but actually ended up using only the GBA for gaming when I was travelling and just "fiddling about" with the GP-32 when I was at home. In the end I sold it on eBay.
I like the idea of the Pandora and it's never going to be mainstream - and, to be fair, that's probably why Nintendo would never come after it for emulation because it just wouldn't be worth it from a financial gain perspective.
this was done before stallman. he was not there right at the start.
You probably need to drop some of the emotion and go get some facts. Stallman was at MIT in 1977 - this was somewhere around the time of the early days of UNIX, DEC didn't even release the VAX until 1978. Yes, I accept he hadn't founded GNU by this stage but he was there working with software that early.
trying to break down a commercial industry is pretty anti-capitalism. aside from that it's about as close as you ever get to being right about anything.
There is a difference in fighting for something you believe in and being anti-capitalist. I thoroughly enjoy spending my hard-earned money on nice things but I won't, for example, ever enter any fast food chain because I disagree with the way they do business. Why is Stallman's view on closed software any different? And why does Stallman therefore not mind people making money from selling GNU software or from supporting it?
free software also existsed before rms was in the game. you know little of history prior to 1990, it seems.
I suggest that is precisely the case for you. As I stated earlier, I am aware of what Stallman has been doing since the mid-70s.
linux has taken off? sorry, i must have missed that one. in any case microsoft not only seems more threatened by apple but also does more to emulate apple in style. is it *pure coincidence* that apple just happens to be in the forefront of all of this?
I work as a security consultant in a telecoms environment and I have worked in telecoms for 25 years. Wherever commercial UNIXes like Solaris and SCO have been traditionally used for workhorse servers, Linux is now in place or making in-roads into those environments. Likewise in embedded devices like TomTom, mobile phones, ISP servers, etc. etc. Some people are also using it on the desktop.
On the desktop, Apple and Linux are, and probably always will, be a minority. Personally, I don't care because I use an OS as a tool to get things done - sometimes it's XP, sometimes it's Linux. To me, Apple is irrelevant, in 30 years I've never had a need to use or own one and I know of 2 people that own Macs. In the US, Apple is second to Windows, in Europe it's Linux.
But like I said, to me an OS is a tool, not a fashion accessory - discuss the "Windows v Linux v Apple war" with someone else...
open protocols and open standards all predate rms. stop acting like the guy created these ideas.
Partially true. The concepts were designed by DARPA during the 1960s but UNIX got TCP/IP in 1982, about the same time Stallman was founding GNU. So go read some history of the Internet.
Can I ask if any of you anti-RMS ranters have ever done anything of the following:
- decorated a room in your house rather than employing a painter? - done your own car maintenance or repairs rather than taking it to the garage? - taken an electrical device apart (or changed a plug fuse) instead of paying an electrician to do it?
If you've done any of the above, then you've done it because of one of the following reasons:
- It's cheaper for you to do it - You believe you can do a better job than the guy you would pay to do it
Yet when Stallman, who is basically a "software DIY" person gives his viewpoints, you don't like it???
Can I suggest you people not take his comments at face value and "read between the lines" a little?
Unfortunately, and whether you like it or not, if you use a piece of closed software where the source code is not subject to review, then there are *no* guarantees that software is not doing stuff with your information or data that you would prefer it didn't do - or have I just imagined all those previous Slashdot articles about, say, the "evils of Windows Genuine Advantage"?
Just because Stallman believes all software should be free does not automatically make it so but he is *absolutely right* in making everyone aware of the *potential* perils of entrusting your information to a third party whose core interest is about making money.
No, all corporations are not evil but many will put profits over customer service, and that is the message Stallman is basically putting across.
...whilst you just so happen completely and conveniently ignore the fact that the guy single-handedly wrote the core parts of an entire operating system!
Yes, RMS can be a bit of a nut but give the man credit where it's due.
1. The software industry started with people giving away software freely between each other before anyone had the idea of making money from it. Stallman was there doing just that right at the start.
2. I'm not sure how anyone can equate the notion "all software should be free" to "capitalist hating zealot". Presumably Stallman travels by plane, eats food like the rest of us and bought his laptop - therefore he has paid money to corporations (just like we all do) for products and services.
3. Do you use Firefox or any other free software? If you do, then you can thank Stallman (at least in part) for being able to do that. Oh, and let's not forget the free TCP/IP stack that allowed commercial OS vendors to connect their OSes to the Internet in the first place.
4. Is it *pure coincidence* that Microsoft has put more effort into improving its products and OSes just about the same time as Linux and OSS took off?
5. You're on Slashdot now, typing in your tunnel-visioned ranting, because of *open* protocols like HTML & TCP/IP.
And on the other side of the coin, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs consider software to be a commercial commodity where the internal complexities of that software are kept hidden from the user. They also consider OSS software to be bad.
What you are getting are two opposing viewpoints where, in reality, the truth is somewhere in between.
Do you *really* mean to tell me that there are computer users in this world who *just* use commercial software? What about Firefox, OpenOffice, etc. etc.?
The point of the issue here is that *if* you choose to use commercial software for your data, then you need to be able to trust that software to do what it says it does.
OSS *is* open to peer review and it is therefore much less likely that a piece of OSS software will do something suspicious with your information than a piece of closed software *might* do - so if you do choose to use closed software, which is entirely your right to do (and where I wholeheartedly disagree with RMS), then you need to appreciate the potential dangers of doing so.
If you are using a piece of proprietary software to which the source code is not available for public review, how can you be *100% sure* that it's not doing something mysterious with your data, or "phoning home" some of your details?
I don't agree with everything RMS says because there's room for both Open Source and proprietary software in this world. But I everyone should be 100% responsible for their own data - no different to being responsible for your own health or for the car you drive on a road - so if you pass that responsibility on to someone else, then you have to accept that the third party *might* just be more interested in making money from your data than keeping it as secure as you might do yourself.
The fact is that a lot of people *do* work for the benefit of their fellow man, whether it's charity workers, paramedics or Open Source programmers.
And even if you yourself choose to use commercial software (which is entirely your right to do), then you have a very blinkered view of the world if you don't sometimes take the opportunity to look at a piece of Open Source Software (no, I'm not talking about Linux but about the myriad of OSS that runs on Windows or other commercial OSes also) just to see if it can do something that you need a computer to do for you.
You forget to mention that since MythTV is an application running on a PC, then you can do all of the other things that a (Linux) PC can do with it as well - plus it's a completely open platform to boot.
I'm currently working on a small Linux-based box that is something I can leave on and access over the Internet when I'm away from home - record TV with MythTV, capture and email images from a motion-sensing camera looking outside my house, do a Wake-On-LAN to other machines in the house. Plus when I'm home, I can surf the Internet with it, play MAME and a few other games with it. Not to mention building in a plant watering system and anything else I can think of.
I've used Nero products in the past and they're okay for all-in-one CD & DVD authoring packages but they're also slow and bloated, and the chances of leaving a Nero package open on a PC over any length of time without it memory leaking and grabbing all the system memory is zero.
They're fine for making infrequent use desktop applications but Nero is the last company I'd go to for any product that had to be left running on a PC long term.
We pay a TV license fee in order to be able to receive TV transmission in our homes.
When you pay the license, you get legal access to all of the BBC's TV programming and the license fee also helps to fund the BBC radio stations and web site. Bearing in mind that I'm a Spanish student, the language materials on the BBC web site are excellent and the fact that all of the TV and radio programming is completely advert free, that, to me justifies the cost alone - but the fact is I get Dr Who and some great comedy shows thrown in as well so I'm more than happy paying it.
If you subscribe to a cable/satellite service like Virgin or Sky, then you pay a monthly rental fee to get additional channels that are chock full of adverts (which is why I won't pay for those services - they can give it to me free with adverts or charge me with no advertising, nothing in between) which you can then use the vendors' box to do all the programming and pausing you want to with.
So ultimately, the only demand for a TiVo-type box is where someone like me just has the free programming and wants the ability to record, stream, pause, etc. Apart from sales tax (VAT) when you buy such a box (or PC components to build it yourself), there is no additional tax to pay.
GBPVR does a good and basic job but there's no way I'm going to expose a Windows XP service to the Internet unless I really have to.
MythTV is a pain to configure but if you're a Linux sysadmin (like me) then you should be well versed in reading manuals and web pages to get the information you need - plus MythTV configuration has got a lot more automated recently and most people find Mythbuntu does a good job as well.
I'm building a MythTV box currently based on Gentoo (my preferred distro) but I'm also building in a lot of additional features with scripts to get over the fact that, being in the UK and a BBC viewer, I can't get to BBC programs when I'm out of the country. So to program MythTV via its web server and have it dump recordings to a storage location on the Internet somewhere overnight, instead of trying to directly upload or stream from my MythTV box to wherever I am via a slow ADSL uplink, is the kind of stuff that I'm looking at.
Yes, there's ways of doing this in Windows also, I guess, but a good shell or Perl script in Linux can usually get most things done.
Of course if he were an Apple fan, he'd see how this gorgeous app works for every day folks keeping track of media...... and if he were an Apple realist, he'd see just how closed every Apple platform actually is.
iPhone is closed, Android is open. That's pretty much all I need to know to make any buying decision.
I used to play NASCAR Racing 2003, by Sierra/Papyrus, which did use SecuROM. There was a VERY TINY minority which had a problem with SecuROM, and this was due to a very specific type of CD drive that was incompatible with it. Nonetheless Papyrus issued a fix for this.
I never played that game but you can bet your life that somewhere on its packaging it said "game CD" which, by implication, meant it should work in a CD-ROM drive in a PC. I recall that SecuROM caused problems with certain CD drives, essentially because SecuROM changes the ISO9660 format into something more proprietary. Therefore, the fact that only a "very tiny minority" suffered problems is irrelevant - what is relevant is the fact that the game was misrepresented at the point of sale by not being on a standard CD disk.
NR2003 was cracked, of course. Heck the game could even be installed with a CD key consisting of all zeros. However the value of SecuROM was in keeping out wreckers from the Sierra matching service, WHICH required having the disk in the drive to connect (as well as an install with a valid CD key).
Why could this not be achieved just by using the "standard" way of doing things? Namely a unique registration key in the game box in order to register on the server.
When it comes to computer software, absolutely nothing beats having it installed on a machine in front of you, with maybe a manual or two and an Internet connection so you can use Google for a few searches - and I'm a techie in UNIX & Windows environments, there's no difference and it's the best way to learn.
Sure, it's nice to have good documentation but not having it isn't a showstopper. The fact is, there are far too many people these days (usually youngsters) who don't have the attention span to sit and work a computer problem out yet still want to call themselves "computer engineers".
Oh, and decent computer engineers can get their point across without abuse.
I don't claim to be an expert in such matters and even within the minimal attention I gave to religious lessons at school, I recall nowhere in Christ's teachings any mention of "hoes" or "booty".
Actually, I'm glad that you bought up the subject of Mechwarrior because I thoroughly enjoyed Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance and won't sound like I'm trolling when I say that I really don't get the big hoohah about Halo.
No, I don't own a console, just a PC and I did play Halo I right through to the end. Yes, it was quite pretty but the AI sucked, particularly for the troops who were on your side trying to drive vehicles through rocks with you manning a gun turret, plus the tiny cackling aliens gave it a feel of "Sesame Street" rather than this wonderful science fiction epic.
As a fan of Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament & Half-Life, I'm not spoilt for choice for FPS games but Halo was, for me, distinctly average. I had a go on a Halo network game on a friend's X-Box, it was okay but nowhere near as much fun as Unreal Tournament online.
I would suspect that a lot of it is to do with licensing costs - there's probably more money to be made in creating a game for a license you own (Halo) rather than one you don't (Mechwarrior).
I don't personally have any involvement with the music industry apart from being an avid music fan who buys lots of CDs.
But I've never understood this idea that a radio station pays for broadcasting rights when, surely, they must be generating more music sales as listeners go & buy the music they hear on the radio.
And for the RIAA to now step in and say that they're just going to take a percentage of profits smacks more of a Mafia-like protection racket rather than something that will go to the artists.
I pity people who buy new merchandise on eBay. If you do your research, you can always find new merchandise cheaper someplace else. The fee structure eBay imposes guarantees that non-affiliated resellers enjoy a 7-8% overhead advantage.
I'm glad someone pointed this out because I myself have noticed this recently as well.
I buy a lot of (non-mainstream) music CDs and up to about six months ago, I was buying most of them on eBay. However, since that time, I don't think I've bought one on there - just because they're usually cheaper on Amazon Marketplace now. In fact, there are 2 or 3 CD sellers I regularly use who sell on both eBay and Amazon and whose prices are cheaper on the latter - presumably as a result of the excessive eBay fees that they have to cover.
That's the type of DRM I can live with. I mean, sure I wish I could load up my SD card and bring it to my friend's place who also has a Wii, but hey, you know, let's face it, I understand Why Nintendo stops me from going on with my SD card from machine to machine, and it's ok.
I don't understand why anyone would see this as being okay.
If you buy a music CD, you can take it over to a friend's house to listen to. Or a board game to play over at a friend's house. Or a bottle of wine to uncork and drink at a friend's house...
Are people *really* starting to become so allied to brands of products that they are prepared to put up with more restrictive usage rights just because they can proudly display a "Nintendo", "Apple" or "Sony" logo?
There may be a degree of difference between the way Sony implements DRM from the way Nintendo does it - but the fact is that it *all* smells of clever marketing to get DRM in through the back door by playing on the needs of a lot of people to feel like they belong to an exclusive little club.
I'd argue that in buying a music CD, it is either going to be in my music collection for many years, sold on second-hand on eBay or a used music shop, or given away freely to a charity shop. (I also buy a lot of used CDs also.)
However, a hard disk that's used to store digital music will probably be replaced every couple of years with the old drives going to landfill.
Digital distribution can therefore be more harmful to the environment.
Slashdot Mirror
When the article first appeared, I followed the link to the web site with the idea of maybe buying one of these things - but, like you, worked out that for a similar price, the Eee will do more.
I used to own a GP-32 as well as a Gameboy Advance but actually ended up using only the GBA for gaming when I was travelling and just "fiddling about" with the GP-32 when I was at home. In the end I sold it on eBay.
I like the idea of the Pandora and it's never going to be mainstream - and, to be fair, that's probably why Nintendo would never come after it for emulation because it just wouldn't be worth it from a financial gain perspective.
this was done before stallman. he was not there right at the start.
You probably need to drop some of the emotion and go get some facts. Stallman was at MIT in 1977 - this was somewhere around the time of the early days of UNIX, DEC didn't even release the VAX until 1978. Yes, I accept he hadn't founded GNU by this stage but he was there working with software that early.
trying to break down a commercial industry is pretty anti-capitalism. aside from that it's about as close as you ever get to being right about anything.
There is a difference in fighting for something you believe in and being anti-capitalist. I thoroughly enjoy spending my hard-earned money on nice things but I won't, for example, ever enter any fast food chain because I disagree with the way they do business. Why is Stallman's view on closed software any different? And why does Stallman therefore not mind people making money from selling GNU software or from supporting it?
free software also existsed before rms was in the game. you know little of history prior to 1990, it seems.
I suggest that is precisely the case for you. As I stated earlier, I am aware of what Stallman has been doing since the mid-70s.
linux has taken off? sorry, i must have missed that one. in any case microsoft not only seems more threatened by apple but also does more to emulate apple in style. is it *pure coincidence* that apple just happens to be in the forefront of all of this?
I work as a security consultant in a telecoms environment and I have worked in telecoms for 25 years. Wherever commercial UNIXes like Solaris and SCO have been traditionally used for workhorse servers, Linux is now in place or making in-roads into those environments. Likewise in embedded devices like TomTom, mobile phones, ISP servers, etc. etc. Some people are also using it on the desktop.
On the desktop, Apple and Linux are, and probably always will, be a minority. Personally, I don't care because I use an OS as a tool to get things done - sometimes it's XP, sometimes it's Linux. To me, Apple is irrelevant, in 30 years I've never had a need to use or own one and I know of 2 people that own Macs. In the US, Apple is second to Windows, in Europe it's Linux.
But like I said, to me an OS is a tool, not a fashion accessory - discuss the "Windows v Linux v Apple war" with someone else...
open protocols and open standards all predate rms. stop acting like the guy created these ideas.
Partially true. The concepts were designed by DARPA during the 1960s but UNIX got TCP/IP in 1982, about the same time Stallman was founding GNU. So go read some history of the Internet.
Can I ask if any of you anti-RMS ranters have ever done anything of the following:
- decorated a room in your house rather than employing a painter?
- done your own car maintenance or repairs rather than taking it to the garage?
- taken an electrical device apart (or changed a plug fuse) instead of paying an electrician to do it?
If you've done any of the above, then you've done it because of one of the following reasons:
- It's cheaper for you to do it
- You believe you can do a better job than the guy you would pay to do it
Yet when Stallman, who is basically a "software DIY" person gives his viewpoints, you don't like it???
Can I suggest you people not take his comments at face value and "read between the lines" a little?
Unfortunately, and whether you like it or not, if you use a piece of closed software where the source code is not subject to review, then there are *no* guarantees that software is not doing stuff with your information or data that you would prefer it didn't do - or have I just imagined all those previous Slashdot articles about, say, the "evils of Windows Genuine Advantage"?
Just because Stallman believes all software should be free does not automatically make it so but he is *absolutely right* in making everyone aware of the *potential* perils of entrusting your information to a third party whose core interest is about making money.
No, all corporations are not evil but many will put profits over customer service, and that is the message Stallman is basically putting across.
...whilst you just so happen completely and conveniently ignore the fact that the guy single-handedly wrote the core parts of an entire operating system!
Yes, RMS can be a bit of a nut but give the man credit where it's due.
1. The software industry started with people giving away software freely between each other before anyone had the idea of making money from it. Stallman was there doing just that right at the start.
2. I'm not sure how anyone can equate the notion "all software should be free" to "capitalist hating zealot". Presumably Stallman travels by plane, eats food like the rest of us and bought his laptop - therefore he has paid money to corporations (just like we all do) for products and services.
3. Do you use Firefox or any other free software? If you do, then you can thank Stallman (at least in part) for being able to do that. Oh, and let's not forget the free TCP/IP stack that allowed commercial OS vendors to connect their OSes to the Internet in the first place.
4. Is it *pure coincidence* that Microsoft has put more effort into improving its products and OSes just about the same time as Linux and OSS took off?
5. You're on Slashdot now, typing in your tunnel-visioned ranting, because of *open* protocols like HTML & TCP/IP.
And on the other side of the coin, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs consider software to be a commercial commodity where the internal complexities of that software are kept hidden from the user. They also consider OSS software to be bad.
What you are getting are two opposing viewpoints where, in reality, the truth is somewhere in between.
Do you *really* mean to tell me that there are computer users in this world who *just* use commercial software? What about Firefox, OpenOffice, etc. etc.?
The point of the issue here is that *if* you choose to use commercial software for your data, then you need to be able to trust that software to do what it says it does.
OSS *is* open to peer review and it is therefore much less likely that a piece of OSS software will do something suspicious with your information than a piece of closed software *might* do - so if you do choose to use closed software, which is entirely your right to do (and where I wholeheartedly disagree with RMS), then you need to appreciate the potential dangers of doing so.
Let me ask you a question.
If you are using a piece of proprietary software to which the source code is not available for public review, how can you be *100% sure* that it's not doing something mysterious with your data, or "phoning home" some of your details?
I don't agree with everything RMS says because there's room for both Open Source and proprietary software in this world. But I everyone should be 100% responsible for their own data - no different to being responsible for your own health or for the car you drive on a road - so if you pass that responsibility on to someone else, then you have to accept that the third party *might* just be more interested in making money from your data than keeping it as secure as you might do yourself.
The fact is that a lot of people *do* work for the benefit of their fellow man, whether it's charity workers, paramedics or Open Source programmers.
And even if you yourself choose to use commercial software (which is entirely your right to do), then you have a very blinkered view of the world if you don't sometimes take the opportunity to look at a piece of Open Source Software (no, I'm not talking about Linux but about the myriad of OSS that runs on Windows or other commercial OSes also) just to see if it can do something that you need a computer to do for you.
They probably use a transparent web proxy between the user PC and the web server.
When the web server sends a standard 404 error page, it goes via the proxy which puts its page in place of it.
You forget to mention that since MythTV is an application running on a PC, then you can do all of the other things that a (Linux) PC can do with it as well - plus it's a completely open platform to boot.
I'm currently working on a small Linux-based box that is something I can leave on and access over the Internet when I'm away from home - record TV with MythTV, capture and email images from a motion-sensing camera looking outside my house, do a Wake-On-LAN to other machines in the house. Plus when I'm home, I can surf the Internet with it, play MAME and a few other games with it. Not to mention building in a plant watering system and anything else I can think of.
I've used Nero products in the past and they're okay for all-in-one CD & DVD authoring packages but they're also slow and bloated, and the chances of leaving a Nero package open on a PC over any length of time without it memory leaking and grabbing all the system memory is zero.
They're fine for making infrequent use desktop applications but Nero is the last company I'd go to for any product that had to be left running on a PC long term.
We pay a TV license fee in order to be able to receive TV transmission in our homes.
When you pay the license, you get legal access to all of the BBC's TV programming and the license fee also helps to fund the BBC radio stations and web site. Bearing in mind that I'm a Spanish student, the language materials on the BBC web site are excellent and the fact that all of the TV and radio programming is completely advert free, that, to me justifies the cost alone - but the fact is I get Dr Who and some great comedy shows thrown in as well so I'm more than happy paying it.
If you subscribe to a cable/satellite service like Virgin or Sky, then you pay a monthly rental fee to get additional channels that are chock full of adverts (which is why I won't pay for those services - they can give it to me free with adverts or charge me with no advertising, nothing in between) which you can then use the vendors' box to do all the programming and pausing you want to with.
So ultimately, the only demand for a TiVo-type box is where someone like me just has the free programming and wants the ability to record, stream, pause, etc. Apart from sales tax (VAT) when you buy such a box (or PC components to build it yourself), there is no additional tax to pay.
GBPVR does a good and basic job but there's no way I'm going to expose a Windows XP service to the Internet unless I really have to.
MythTV is a pain to configure but if you're a Linux sysadmin (like me) then you should be well versed in reading manuals and web pages to get the information you need - plus MythTV configuration has got a lot more automated recently and most people find Mythbuntu does a good job as well.
I'm building a MythTV box currently based on Gentoo (my preferred distro) but I'm also building in a lot of additional features with scripts to get over the fact that, being in the UK and a BBC viewer, I can't get to BBC programs when I'm out of the country. So to program MythTV via its web server and have it dump recordings to a storage location on the Internet somewhere overnight, instead of trying to directly upload or stream from my MythTV box to wherever I am via a slow ADSL uplink, is the kind of stuff that I'm looking at.
Yes, there's ways of doing this in Windows also, I guess, but a good shell or Perl script in Linux can usually get most things done.
You've not convinced me.
I'm gonna download more porn just to be safe.
Usable??? Hell, with my "ZZ Top" beard, kaftan and sandals, they won't even let me in the Apple shop!
Let me guess, (s)he invented "she-mail".
Remember, he's using a totally locked down Apple device - you might want to explain the concept of "homebrew" to him.
Macbook Air is a concept machine designed to fit a specific lifestyle and usage style.
Damn right! The "I have far too much money & need to show off my gadgets in Starbucks" lifestyle!
Of course if he were an Apple fan, he'd see how this gorgeous app works for every day folks keeping track of media... ... and if he were an Apple realist, he'd see just how closed every Apple platform actually is.
iPhone is closed, Android is open. That's pretty much all I need to know to make any buying decision.
I used to play NASCAR Racing 2003, by Sierra/Papyrus, which did use SecuROM. There was a VERY TINY minority which had a problem with SecuROM, and this was due to a very specific type of CD drive that was incompatible with it. Nonetheless Papyrus issued a fix for this.
I never played that game but you can bet your life that somewhere on its packaging it said "game CD" which, by implication, meant it should work in a CD-ROM drive in a PC. I recall that SecuROM caused problems with certain CD drives, essentially because SecuROM changes the ISO9660 format into something more proprietary. Therefore, the fact that only a "very tiny minority" suffered problems is irrelevant - what is relevant is the fact that the game was misrepresented at the point of sale by not being on a standard CD disk.
NR2003 was cracked, of course. Heck the game could even be installed with a CD key consisting of all zeros. However the value of SecuROM was in keeping out wreckers from the Sierra matching service, WHICH required having the disk in the drive to connect (as well as an install with a valid CD key).
Why could this not be achieved just by using the "standard" way of doing things? Namely a unique registration key in the game box in order to register on the server.
Actually, you're completely wrong.
When it comes to computer software, absolutely nothing beats having it installed on a machine in front of you, with maybe a manual or two and an Internet connection so you can use Google for a few searches - and I'm a techie in UNIX & Windows environments, there's no difference and it's the best way to learn.
Sure, it's nice to have good documentation but not having it isn't a showstopper. The fact is, there are far too many people these days (usually youngsters) who don't have the attention span to sit and work a computer problem out yet still want to call themselves "computer engineers".
Oh, and decent computer engineers can get their point across without abuse.
I don't claim to be an expert in such matters and even within the minimal attention I gave to religious lessons at school, I recall nowhere in Christ's teachings any mention of "hoes" or "booty".
Actually, I'm glad that you bought up the subject of Mechwarrior because I thoroughly enjoyed Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance and won't sound like I'm trolling when I say that I really don't get the big hoohah about Halo.
No, I don't own a console, just a PC and I did play Halo I right through to the end. Yes, it was quite pretty but the AI sucked, particularly for the troops who were on your side trying to drive vehicles through rocks with you manning a gun turret, plus the tiny cackling aliens gave it a feel of "Sesame Street" rather than this wonderful science fiction epic.
As a fan of Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament & Half-Life, I'm not spoilt for choice for FPS games but Halo was, for me, distinctly average. I had a go on a Halo network game on a friend's X-Box, it was okay but nowhere near as much fun as Unreal Tournament online.
I would suspect that a lot of it is to do with licensing costs - there's probably more money to be made in creating a game for a license you own (Halo) rather than one you don't (Mechwarrior).
I don't personally have any involvement with the music industry apart from being an avid music fan who buys lots of CDs.
But I've never understood this idea that a radio station pays for broadcasting rights when, surely, they must be generating more music sales as listeners go & buy the music they hear on the radio.
And for the RIAA to now step in and say that they're just going to take a percentage of profits smacks more of a Mafia-like protection racket rather than something that will go to the artists.
I pity people who buy new merchandise on eBay. If you do your research, you can always find new merchandise cheaper someplace else. The fee structure eBay imposes guarantees that non-affiliated resellers enjoy a 7-8% overhead advantage.
I'm glad someone pointed this out because I myself have noticed this recently as well.
I buy a lot of (non-mainstream) music CDs and up to about six months ago, I was buying most of them on eBay. However, since that time, I don't think I've bought one on there - just because they're usually cheaper on Amazon Marketplace now. In fact, there are 2 or 3 CD sellers I regularly use who sell on both eBay and Amazon and whose prices are cheaper on the latter - presumably as a result of the excessive eBay fees that they have to cover.
That's the type of DRM I can live with. I mean, sure I wish I could load up my SD card and bring it to my friend's place who also has a Wii, but hey, you know, let's face it, I understand Why Nintendo stops me from going on with my SD card from machine to machine, and it's ok.
I don't understand why anyone would see this as being okay.
If you buy a music CD, you can take it over to a friend's house to listen to. Or a board game to play over at a friend's house. Or a bottle of wine to uncork and drink at a friend's house...
Are people *really* starting to become so allied to brands of products that they are prepared to put up with more restrictive usage rights just because they can proudly display a "Nintendo", "Apple" or "Sony" logo?
There may be a degree of difference between the way Sony implements DRM from the way Nintendo does it - but the fact is that it *all* smells of clever marketing to get DRM in through the back door by playing on the needs of a lot of people to feel like they belong to an exclusive little club.
I'd argue that in buying a music CD, it is either going to be in my music collection for many years, sold on second-hand on eBay or a used music shop, or given away freely to a charity shop. (I also buy a lot of used CDs also.)
However, a hard disk that's used to store digital music will probably be replaced every couple of years with the old drives going to landfill.
Digital distribution can therefore be more harmful to the environment.