I've noticed the exact same thing. I'm a rocket scientist IRL, over educated in the technical fields, strong interests in traditional nerd culture etc, but not so interested in the new geek stuff like comic book movies. I haven't even seen the new star wars.
There are a lot of people like me who feel coopted out of the culture they grew up with. I feel like I'm living n a cargo cult culture. It' difficult to discuss ideas because the broad and deep technical background is no longer there.
Shame I don't have mod points to help the person who already voted you up, as this is bloody perceptive stuff. Everyone's a bloody "geek" nowadays.
There's actually nothing wrong with being interested in some of that stuff, but just because you know how to install apps on your Android phone and know who Alan Turing is- without having any real interest in any of his actual work- doesn't make you a geek in the same sense as him.
I commented just yesterday that although people nowadays are generally *much* more tech-savvy in general than they were- say- ten or fifteen years ago, most people don't seem to know or care what a basic term like "digital" actually means. That's a synonym for online, or high-tech, or something, isn't it...?
There's a guy I know at work who ticks way, *way* more of the stereotypical "geek" boxes than I do- something I've actually joked to him about. He spends lots of time playing World of Warcraft (I haven't been into computer games for the better part of 20 years), was (genuinely) excited to see the new Star Wars film (never cared about Star Wars that much myself) and apparently collected overpriced plastic anime figures at one point. (Don't think he still does as much, but then he's in his mid-thirties and in a steady relationship now). He's also pretty outgoing and far more socially skilled than I am, (#) especially in the "one of the lads" context. (He also has tendencies bordering on the neddish when drunk). He hasn't shown any signs of being interested in science or any of the "hard" traditional geek interests- as opposed to technology- itself.
But he's not fake- he genuinely is into all that stuff. It's just that a lot of those "geeky" interests, as they've become adopted by more people, have ceased to be the signifiers that they used to be, either of deeper interests, or of personality type.
To be fair, even in the past, I doubt it was ever as clear cut as the stereotypes imply (even in the early 90s I knew a guy at school more skilled with computers than myself who was also sociable, outgoing and into the rave scene in a way that I wasn't). But it's probably even less so today.
Then again, I've come to realise that I'm not remotely a "true" geek in either the old "true" sense nor in the modern superficial sense and have probably been guilty of self-stereotyping and thinking I knew myself more than I did. So maybe I'm not the person I should be comparing others to, regardless. But that's another kettle of fish.
(#) It could be argued that the social skills- or lack of- aspect is somewhat more to do with "nerd"-ism rather than geekism. But there's nothing more geeky *or* nerdy than getting obsessed with the difference between those terms, so who gives a toss?;-)
No, just a plain old 1050- I didn't have that much disposable income. It was still bloody good at the time, because Dixons (UK retail chain) had a bundle deal which included an 800XL and the 1050 drive for £120, less than the Spectrum (a generally inferior machine) was selling for on its own.
'Course, by that point, the becoming-dated Spectrum was continuing to sell on the fact it had a *huge* established base of software, whereas the 800XL... didn't, so much.
I had the tape deck for the Atari, and it was nothing but a trail of tears.
Yes. The tape interface on the Atari 400 and 800 and their descendants was particularly slow, even compared to the Spectrum and C64.
I suspect that this is because- while it was ahead of its time enough that it could compete with later competitors like the C64- it came out in the late 70s when memory sizes were much smaller. The load speed wouldn't have been an issue given the small size of programs able to fit into the 8 KB of RAM they launched with. (Quite good for the time; the 400 was originally only intended to have 4 KB).
Unfortunately, they didn't improve it on the later models, such as the 64 KB 800XL. I had an 800XL, and even programs designed to fit into 48 KB could easily take over 15 minutes to load!:-(
I suspect they didn't upgrade it for the "XL" models because by that point the US market was becoming primarily disk-based. Unfortunately in Europe, tapes were still common until the 8-bit market died in the early 1990s. I had a disk drive with my 800XL, but lots of games were tape only. Uuuuurrrrrgh!!
Eventually discovered a good program that was able to transfer most games to disk, but not before enduring years of PITA slow loading from tape, complete with "LOAD ERROR- TRY OTHER SIDE"!
Not that this was a problem with cassettes themselves- as they were never originally designed for that- and I guess when disk drives were very expensive, they were the only way of cheaply storing data. But while I'll cut cassettes a lot of slack, I'll never get nostalgic for loading from tape.
I think he knows what you mean, he's just making a point about the irritating habit of using "digital" as a synonym for downloads and streaming and- even more irritatingly- implying that CDs and DVDs somehow aren't "digital". (Compact Discs were originally marketed using the fact they were digital- it was arguably the biggest selling point, and is even included in the bloody logo!).
I've commented before that I'd expect this kind of annoying use of language in the mainstream press but that you'd expect better from Slashdot which is- or was- a site for genuine geeks interested in the underlying science and technology and not just the superficial "boys toys" aspects (#), but apparently not.
(#) It's my belief that despite the fact people are apparently *much* more tech-savvy than they were even 15 years ago, people's understanding of (and interest in) the underlying fundamentals- such as what "digital" actually means- isn't actually that much better when it comes down to it. Yeah, every man and his dog is obsessed with his smartphone in a way that only marginalised geeks were with technology back in the day- but while they know how to use the Android interface, do they actually understand even at a basic level how the underlying technology (e.g. the Internet and computers) work? They know how many gigabytes is a decent amount for what they want to use, but do they understand what a gigabyte- or rather a byte- actually is? I suspect most people don't. Anyway, as I said, I expect that from the mainstream media, I expect better from Slashdot contributors... except I don't any more.:-(
Back in the day, when Lucas was just a filmmaker, Star Wars was conceived literally as "a cowboy western in space".
It was SUPPOSED to be action-packed and a little cheesy
As far as I'm aware, it was heavily influenced by the original Flash Gordon and similar serials from the 1930s- apparently Lucas originally started out trying to get the rights to remake Flash Gordon. You can even see signs of this in the stylised screen wipes, which a lot of people now associate with Star Wars and don't realise are an obvious homage to the use of those wipes in those old serials.
(The final script also apparently owes a lot to the 1958 Japanese film, The Hidden Fortress).
Regardless, whether or not its influences count as "cowboy western", it was undeniably influenced by- and to some extent meant as a modernised version of- those old pulp fiction serials, regardless of whether or not some people take it a little too seriously.
Someone made the perceptive comment that whereas the original Star Wars trilogy was influenced by all those old films, the problem with the prequels was that they were influenced by Star Wars.
Well, that and (a) the fact that George Lucas was by then so powerful that no-one was able to stand up to him in the way they did on the original films (i.e. no-one to say "you can type this shit, but you can't say it" or change the famous Leia/Solo "I know" exchange) and it seems clear that most people think Lucas's work strongly benefited from having to accept such external input and collaboration. And (b) The fact that the prequels- what I saw of them- seemed more po-faced and aware of their own (inflated) "seriousness", aside from the designated- and maligned- comic relief.
Disclaimer: I was never a rabid fan of the originals anyway, and I always found C3PO (who I keep wanting to call CP3O) a bit annoying too. But I can see why people like them on the original level they were intended, and I can understand why some people might take them more seriously than that... I just don't necessarily agree that it's entirely justified.:-)
It would be hard to argue that Apple's decision to leave out the floppy drive didn't cause the situation we had 5 years later.
It wouldn't be hard to argue that at all! (#)
As I said, CD writers were already getting cheaper by the late 90s, and Apple can hardly claim credit for hastening their adoption since they didn't even include one.
Yes, the 1.44MB floppy format's capacity was already outdated and starting to look badly out of sync with the sort of file sizes and uses common by the late 90s (cf. the rapidly-growing capacity of hard drives, and the amount of data already-widespread CD-ROMs could hold). The pressure for a replacement was already there in the PC market, the only problem was that no realistic alternative at a practical price had received universal adoption by then. Apple's abolition of the floppy didn't provide a solution at all, it only forced their users to buy external floppy drives.
At best, as the other guy suggested, Apple provide a marginal level of forward pressure to something that would have happened anyway.
If anything, what Apple *do* deserve some credit for is encouraging the adoption of USB, whose time had- or should have- arrived by then. And even that was available in PCs at the time- the one I bought 3 or 4 months before the iMac came out included USB, the problem was that it wasn't that well-supported, and there seemed to be no hurry to do so. So maybe they helped that- and it could be argued, indirectly helped the adoption of USB pen drives several years later- but even that was by forcing the issue (i.e. abolishing legacy ports), and I suspect that USB would have taken off eventually anyway. At least in that case they included a realistic alternative, unlike with the abolition of the floppy.
(#) I think your nickname gives away your slightly partisan nature:-)
Apple has always been doing stuff like this. I remember when they removed 3.5" floppy drive [..] Cue a lot of companies having to buy external floppy drives at ridiculous prices.
Don't know if you were thinking of the original late-90s iMac, which Apple made a big hurrah about not including a floppy drive. Except that- for all its archaicness- there was still no universal affordable alternative to the floppy (#), which is why almost every bondi blue iMac you saw had a external floppy (in matching colours) hanging off it anyway!! (Ironically far less tidy and aesthetically pleasing than having it built in like the CD reader would have been).
Had they done that five years later, yeah, it'd have been more sensible. Circa 1998, it was just a contrived anti-feature that gave Apple a "we're so futuristic" selling point anyway, one that fanboys still trumpet today.
(#) CD writers were starting to come down in price quite fast by the late-90s, but they still weren't cheap enough at that point to be included as a default option, which would explain why Apple didn't even include one! The Internet (which IIRC was one of their suggestions for transferring files) was still 56kbps dial-up even for most people that *did* have it, and far from everyone did back then (remember that the other person you wanted to exchange files with would *also* need Internet access). Pen drives weren't even around then- Wikipedia claims that the first ones came out in 2000- and would take quite a bit longer to reach dirt-cheap floppy-replacing affordability.
Crap brands who bought the name of a previously respected company, e.g. Polaroid
Interestingly, the "Polaroid" camera listed there (the Polaroid 300 / Polaroid PIC-300) is actually just a *Fujifilm* Instax Mini 7 camera. That's right- the only camera Polaroid now sell that uses anything like the traditional Polaroid film technology is actually one made by Fujifilm (who licensed the patents from Polaroid)!
The current owners of the Polaroid brand *do* appear to be treating the instant photography line with a little more respect than the previous owners (who cancelled the original Polaroid film cameras- the only non-licensed thing they did, as even "their" digital cameras had simply been licensed-out rebrands). But outside that, they're still continuing the habit of whoring out the Polaroid name to random third parties for rebranding cheap tat no-name electronics, such as LCD televisions. In fact, in the UK, they're actually letting the supermarket chain Asda use it (in effect) as an own-brand for audiovisual products.
So, yeah, the Polaroid name *is* being used for random tat, but in this case, the "Polaroid 300" is actually just a rebranded Fujifilm model that gets decent reviews. Though I'd probably just go for the Fujifilm one myself anyway.
So is it Britain or England? I'ts not 'rocket science' guys.
As the other guy said, Britain or England are both correct, since England is a part of Britain and despite their position quite some distance from the mainland, the Scilly Isles are still considered part of England.
As a nationalistic Scot, I dislike when "England" and "Britain" are used interchangeably, and the headline/summary discrepancy does smack of that being the reason- however, since it was still technically correct I wasn't going to make a deal of it until you made that comment.
(You can stop reading here if you don't want a confusingly-detailed breakdown of the various terms. Just at least do me a favour as long as I have to remain technically British and don't assume "English" and "British" are synonyms! )
FWIW, if one wants to start nitpicking, the term "Britain" on its own isn't really well-enough defined in modern usage to argue over- beyond the fact it definitely *isn't* synonymous with "England". Generally "Britain" tends to be used even by people here as synonymous with the political state of the United Kingdom (i.e. the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"). "Great Britain" is the geographic term for the main island including Scotland, England and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, hence the full name of the UK. Meanwhile, the "British Isles"- a geographic term- includes the island of Ireland (part of which is of course an entirely independent country), along with some others such as the Isle of Man and the aforementioned Scilly Isles. (Some people in the Irish Republic dislike the term "British Isles", which is understandable given the use of "British" above).
What's really going to bake your noodle is that whereas the Scilly Isles are considered part of England, the Isle of Man, despite being a British crown dependency roughly the same distance from the mainland, isn't even technically a part of the United Kingdom itself...:-/
Actually, now that I've looked into it, the Channel Islands (i.e. Guernsey and Jersey) are also considered a part of the "British Isles"- a nominally geographic term- despite the fact they're far closer to- and more obviously associated with- France. One might suspect they were only counted as part of the "British Isles" for political reasons, since they're British crown dependencies, albeit not a part of the UK itself (like the Isle of Man).
TWX: "Betamax" probably encompasses more than simply the end-consumer tape. "SuperBeta" is a common commercial standard...
Farmer Tim: The format used in broadcast was called Betacam (replaced by Betacam SP, Digibeta, Betacam SX and HDCAM in the same physical format, all incompatible with Betamax)
Indeed... came here to say this, want to say it again in bold text as people keep getting it wrong anyway.
*** REGULAR BETAMAX WAS *NEVER* WIDELY USED AS A PROFESSIONAL FORMAT. YOU'RE THINKING OF "BETACAM", A SEPARATE FORMAT WHOSE ORIGINAL VERSIONS USED THE SAME CASSETTE AND TAPE DESIGN, BUT HAD AN ENTIRELY INCOMPATIBLE AND MUCH HIGHER QUALITY RECORDING FORMAT! (And ran the tape at a much higher speed) ***
Ahem... thank you.:-)
Anyway, minor credit to the GP for at least not *quite* repeating this fallacy in its usual form, but yeah, he's still wrong in confusing Betacam with SuperBeta, a marginally-improved and mostly-compatible version of the consumer format.
TWX:much in the same way that "SuperVHS" was a common commercial standard
NO IT BLOODY WELL WASN'T!!!
Jeez, I'm taking that "minor credit" back!;-) SuperVHS was a consumer format... where did you get this (mis-)information?!
Apparently they tried creating a professional format called "M" which used the VHS cassette design but- like Betacam- had a much higher tape speed and entirely-incompatible recording format compared to its consumer sibling. Apparently it flopped and a later version called "MII" enjoyed moderate success at best.
I read your comment and was about to post the link to "The Market for Lemons" until I got to the end and realised that's exactly the situation you'd spotted.:-)
the BBC's high-quality disc extras do not seem to have made the jump from disc to digital
"Disc to digital"? Are you comparing it to the releases on analogue formats such as Laserdisc and CED?
Or is this just another example of the stupid and lazy misappropriation of "digital" to mean synonymous with "online" or "download" and contrast with non-online formats such as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Compact Disc Digital-F******-Audio"? (Yes, the fact that CD was digital was one of its major selling points).
That's kind of understandable (not forgivable, but understandable) on crappy mainstream sites written by and for people who neither know nor care as much about technology as they'd like to think. (#) OTOH, I don't think it even counts as nitpicking to expect better from a site like Slashdot which is supposed to cater- at least it used to- for actual geeks and not just boys toys' gadget fetishists who think they're geeks because it's cool now and they buy a new smartphone every 18 months.
(#) I'd be willing to bet that despite the man-on-the-street's apparent increased familiarity and comfort with digital and electronic devices compared with 30 to 40 years ago, most people still don't understand as much about the underlying technology as this would suggest, and probably still wouldn't be able to explain what "digital" means.
Should Star Trek be more about Ghosts? by Dervish("Banned User" (!))
Maybe to revitalise the series it needs a more dark, ethereal spooky slant.
I have come up with three pitches for a sort of Trek meets X-files type show where Starfleet investigators delve into the supernatural.
Here are my first three ideas:
Some poossible stories to feature ghosts:
1) Starfleet Command is haunted by the wraith of a ship designer who is about to die but has projected his soul into the ship to make starships alive - Starfleet loves the new ships and the designer has to kill murderers and psycopaths to put their souls into battleships so he goes around murdering new people.
2) The Wormhole Aliens reveal to the Bajorans that all the Bajorans ever to have lived have their spirits in the Celestial Temple (wormhole) but are to be wiped out because the Prophets are cross with Bajor joining the Federation. Colonel Kira has to get Starfleets best scientists (Data, Bashir and Barclay) to send her spirit into the Temple to find Sisko and see what is going on.
3) Little Rene's gost can't find peace bercause of the horrible burning death he suffered in France. Picard, tormented by the ghosts pleas for help from his uncle, journeys back to France and discovers Rene and his famnily were murdered by Section 31 agents as part of a strange plot. Picard discovers the truth behind the reality of ghosts which has been hidden for millenia...
I think Star Trek should feature ghosts more heavily and these 3 ideas would be very exciting.
Disclaimer: No, I am not "Dervish". Fortunately.:-) I genuinely don't know if he/she is for real, but that's a strange thread. Shame that his "interesting" artist's impression of the ghost character (bad MS Paint on top of drawing of generic Star Trek ship deck, amusingly naff) is no longer on ImageShack.
I like this reply:-
Bizarre thread. It's a bit like asking whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be more about talking haddock - it could be, but it'd be a very different show.
To be fair, most "portable" video recording systems in the early 70's were skip frame.
I remember reading about the Cartrivision, and being willing to cut the limitations described some slack on the basis that it came out in 1972, which is *very* early on in terms of domestic videocassette recorders.
That was, until I'd remembered that the Philips N1500 also came out in 1972 and didn't have a lot of those limitations. It was the first model to support their flop "Video Cassette Recording (VCR)" format. In particular, it doesn't appear to have been skip frame. In fact, from what I've read, the N1500 appears to have been far closer in design and execution to later video formats like VHS and Betamax.
That's not to say it was perfect- apparently there were problems with the design of the reel-on-reel tape mechanism and feed, and later formats increased tape efficiency by removing the need for a guard band, amongst other improvements. Still, it looks to have been more advanced than Cartrivision.
Not only does the current article itself mention the N1500, but reading it more closely it actually makes basically the same points I made above about its technical superiority and closer resemblance to later machines!
In Cartrivision's defence, the OP's comment that it had "no rewind" is incorrect; the "no rewind" only applied to rental tapes used in domestic recorders; i.e. it was an anti-feature designed to ensure once-only viewing, but didn't apply to regular tapes.
Yawn... years later, there are still oh-so-clever people kneejerk yelling "Betteridge" in response to every headline phrased as a question, not understanding what the original point of Betteridge's law actually was.
Hint; this isn't it, it's a (probably) legitimate question, and even if it was a crap attempt to kick-start a discussion by phrasing it in that form, it's still not an example of Betteridge.
On the flip side, there are less serious gamers like myself (*) who might consider the buying the 3DS, but would be put off by the fact that to access certain hidden features- or, more seriously, advantages- in games *that you'd already paid for*, you then had to shell out more for these figures which you have no interest in, nor space in your house for.
If some people like that- good for them. But personally, if I'm expected to buy into this sort of thing to get full use out of a 3DS, I'm not even going to bother.
Probably Nintendo have done their sums and research and estimated that they'll make more from tying their consoles to the Amiibo than they'll lose. Maybe they got those sums right, and maybe they didn't- but even if they did, it's possibly not the 100% win that you think it is.
(*) Or rather, people who are *only* interested in the games- casually or otherwise. There are probably many "serious" gamers who have no interest in collecting "Sailor Moon" Happy Meal toys with embedded RFIDs either.
I have a page where I put up a bunch of info about my experiments and memories of my Commodore systems. In the years that page has existed, the ownership of the C= logo/name/etc changed hands FIVE TIMES!
It's not just that, it's that- as far as I can tell- the rights to Commodore's various products and brands have not only been split up, but also sublicensed over the years to the point of being a confusing mess.
The company (*) that made the "Commodore 64x" around four years ago- you remember, the PC in a case that at least *looked* like a C64- also released the "Amiga 1000", "2000" and "3000". These had sod all to do with the original Amigas of those names. In fact they weren't even computers in their own right, but just home theatre PC cases, spuriously claiming to be "revivals" of the originals.
What makes this more stupid is that, at the same time, other companies were still making- under license- "real" Amigas. When I say "real", I mean they support the current version of the AmigaOS- also produced under license!- even though they aren't remotely low-level compatible with the original Amigas. (In fact, the only reason for having AmigaOS run on that overpriced, underpowered custom hardware, rather than commodity PCs seems to be as a means to subsidise AmigaOS via the very small- but incredibly diehard- remaining userbase).
Of course, these are two different things- the HTPC "Amiga" was an utterly second-rate, shameless attempt to exploit the nostalgia market with something that didn't even look like an Amiga, whereas the AmigaOne et al is aimed at the rabid diehards who are still using AmigaOS almost 20 years after it died as a mainstream proposition. But the point is that they were happy to whore out the Amiga name for two entirely different "Amigas" at the same time.
And then there's the fact that AmigaOS itself was the subject of a legal dispute. Or the fact that the current Amiga Inc. (the apparent owner/licensee of the Amiga rights) notably *isn't* the same company as the "Commodore" that owns the rights to *that* brand.
This isn't remotely complete, and doesn't even touch on the passing around and splitting of the rights in the wake of Commodore's demise. (Nostalgia-related exploitation of the brand goes back as far 1998- just four years after Commodore's demise- when the "Commodore 64" name was used on a crappy low-powered web PC). The point is that the rights are all over the place and have been whored out all over the shop.
It hardly matters if this latest b******t attempt to slap a "Commodore Pet" badge on a mediocre Android smartphone and claim it as a revival of the Pet (even though it was to come with Vic 20 and C64- not Pet!- emulators that any Android device could run) is "officially" endorsed or not. It's all crap, who gives a toss anyway?
(*) "Commodore USA", who were themselves just a company that had licensed the "Commodore" name from the rights holders and are now no more.
Sneak preview; three virtually identical questions of the form "How Much [language x] Should You Know For an Entry-Level [language x] Job?" going to the Dice website and "submitted" by the same Slashdot employee in just over two weeks.
Bonus; OP linked above correctly predicted this week's story and even got the language right.
That's almost funny, except that it isn't. Admittedly, Slashdot has been "going down the tubes" almost since it launched, but this is particularly crap.
Er.... yeah. Indeed you did. I missed those, but this is utterly, utterly blatant now that it's been pointed out; this should have been posted higher- it's one of the few cases I'd forgive posting as an offtopic "reply" to an early comment in order to increase its prominence.
Note the a gap of eight days between the stories in both cases. Note that the three stories were submitted respectively by Nerval's Lobster, Nerval's Lobster and, er... Nerval's Lobster. Who happens to work for Slashdot.
Not that I'm suggesting that the fact Slashdot is now owned by the IT and engineering careers website Dice has anything to do with it being used to push out formulaic and self-serving "submissions" like this. *cough*
Seriously, this makes even the old Slashdot "whoops, a stupid editor 'accidentally' posted the same good-for-attracting-pageviews-and-discussion story twice just as it fell off the front page" cynicism look good.
To be fair, the entire complaint of the author was that now he would have a fourth music service. In this case, the actual solution is, in fact, to not buy it.
I read the implied criticism as being that he'd have to subscribe to yet another service to get whatever content was exclusive to that one (as already happens with many video streaming services).
I didn't get the impression from his tone that he was actually moaning about being forced (as in, absolutely no choice in the matter) to buy Apple's service.
Even if Apple's streaming was just a poxy generic service with no exclusives, though, he'd still have the right to slag it off on that basis!:-)
Yes, I did. That sounds like what the author was getting at.
Bullshit and utter nonsense. In a capitalist system, anyone can sell anything they want (within the confines of legality) and the market will determine whether that was a reasonable idea or not.
Yes, and part of the mechanism that determines this involves the free exchange of information and opinion on a given product. Whether or not people own it or not.
That was the point. What did you *still* not understand after having it explained three times?
As I *already* explained, it's an illogical and defensive extrapolation; why would someone having the right to freely sell something imply that someone else didn't have the right to share their opinion on it, regardless of whether they own or intend owning it?!
Yet people- yourself included- seem to act as if this is somehow an attack on the "free" market. It isn't; quite the opposite, as I said, the free market requires freedom of information to operate efficiently.
Go and reread what I said; you had it explained to you and you still made the same stupid mistake of assuming that "free market -> no freedom of speech to criticise" (which is what it boils down to). I'm not rehashing what I said a fourth time.
PERIOD.
Adding "PERIOD" in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS doesn't make your argument any stronger.
Whining about whether such a product or service should be allowed to exist misses the point that it's not up to you whether they should be allowed to exist or not.
Don't get the impression that anyone was denying this; rather they were criticising it. *You* were the one who jumped to this conclusion, presumably because you assume that (valid) criticism of a product is an attack on the free market- even though it's quite the opposite- and defensively start making assumptions about what people were actually saying.
If you don't like it, buy something else.
That doesn't negate anyone's right to criticise the product. But we're going round in circles here.
Nobody is actually forcing you to participate in any new service, are they?
Nobody claimed that they were, though if Apple have exclusives through their service, people still may miss out if they're not using it.
That aside, your implication that any criticism of the service is invalid because people aren't being forced to buy it is the same argumentative fallacy that crops up here over and over again.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed the exact same thing. I'm a rocket scientist IRL, over educated in the technical fields, strong interests in traditional nerd culture etc, but not so interested in the new geek stuff like comic book movies. I haven't even seen the new star wars.
There are a lot of people like me who feel coopted out of the culture they grew up with. I feel like I'm living n a cargo cult culture. It' difficult to discuss ideas because the broad and deep technical background is no longer there.
Shame I don't have mod points to help the person who already voted you up, as this is bloody perceptive stuff. Everyone's a bloody "geek" nowadays.
;-)
There's actually nothing wrong with being interested in some of that stuff, but just because you know how to install apps on your Android phone and know who Alan Turing is- without having any real interest in any of his actual work- doesn't make you a geek in the same sense as him.
I commented just yesterday that although people nowadays are generally *much* more tech-savvy in general than they were- say- ten or fifteen years ago, most people don't seem to know or care what a basic term like "digital" actually means. That's a synonym for online, or high-tech, or something, isn't it...?
There's a guy I know at work who ticks way, *way* more of the stereotypical "geek" boxes than I do- something I've actually joked to him about. He spends lots of time playing World of Warcraft (I haven't been into computer games for the better part of 20 years), was (genuinely) excited to see the new Star Wars film (never cared about Star Wars that much myself) and apparently collected overpriced plastic anime figures at one point. (Don't think he still does as much, but then he's in his mid-thirties and in a steady relationship now). He's also pretty outgoing and far more socially skilled than I am, (#) especially in the "one of the lads" context. (He also has tendencies bordering on the neddish when drunk). He hasn't shown any signs of being interested in science or any of the "hard" traditional geek interests- as opposed to technology- itself.
But he's not fake- he genuinely is into all that stuff. It's just that a lot of those "geeky" interests, as they've become adopted by more people, have ceased to be the signifiers that they used to be, either of deeper interests, or of personality type.
To be fair, even in the past, I doubt it was ever as clear cut as the stereotypes imply (even in the early 90s I knew a guy at school more skilled with computers than myself who was also sociable, outgoing and into the rave scene in a way that I wasn't). But it's probably even less so today.
Then again, I've come to realise that I'm not remotely a "true" geek in either the old "true" sense nor in the modern superficial sense and have probably been guilty of self-stereotyping and thinking I knew myself more than I did. So maybe I'm not the person I should be comparing others to, regardless. But that's another kettle of fish.
(#) It could be argued that the social skills- or lack of- aspect is somewhat more to do with "nerd"-ism rather than geekism. But there's nothing more geeky *or* nerdy than getting obsessed with the difference between those terms, so who gives a toss?
No, just a plain old 1050- I didn't have that much disposable income. It was still bloody good at the time, because Dixons (UK retail chain) had a bundle deal which included an 800XL and the 1050 drive for £120, less than the Spectrum (a generally inferior machine) was selling for on its own.
'Course, by that point, the becoming-dated Spectrum was continuing to sell on the fact it had a *huge* established base of software, whereas the 800XL... didn't, so much.
I had the tape deck for the Atari, and it was nothing but a trail of tears.
Yes. The tape interface on the Atari 400 and 800 and their descendants was particularly slow, even compared to the Spectrum and C64.
:-(
I suspect that this is because- while it was ahead of its time enough that it could compete with later competitors like the C64- it came out in the late 70s when memory sizes were much smaller. The load speed wouldn't have been an issue given the small size of programs able to fit into the 8 KB of RAM they launched with. (Quite good for the time; the 400 was originally only intended to have 4 KB).
Unfortunately, they didn't improve it on the later models, such as the 64 KB 800XL. I had an 800XL, and even programs designed to fit into 48 KB could easily take over 15 minutes to load!
I suspect they didn't upgrade it for the "XL" models because by that point the US market was becoming primarily disk-based. Unfortunately in Europe, tapes were still common until the 8-bit market died in the early 1990s. I had a disk drive with my 800XL, but lots of games were tape only. Uuuuurrrrrgh!!
Eventually discovered a good program that was able to transfer most games to disk, but not before enduring years of PITA slow loading from tape, complete with "LOAD ERROR- TRY OTHER SIDE"!
Not that this was a problem with cassettes themselves- as they were never originally designed for that- and I guess when disk drives were very expensive, they were the only way of cheaply storing data. But while I'll cut cassettes a lot of slack, I'll never get nostalgic for loading from tape.
I think he knows what you mean, he's just making a point about the irritating habit of using "digital" as a synonym for downloads and streaming and- even more irritatingly- implying that CDs and DVDs somehow aren't "digital". (Compact Discs were originally marketed using the fact they were digital- it was arguably the biggest selling point, and is even included in the bloody logo!).
:-(
I've commented before that I'd expect this kind of annoying use of language in the mainstream press but that you'd expect better from Slashdot which is- or was- a site for genuine geeks interested in the underlying science and technology and not just the superficial "boys toys" aspects (#), but apparently not.
(#) It's my belief that despite the fact people are apparently *much* more tech-savvy than they were even 15 years ago, people's understanding of (and interest in) the underlying fundamentals- such as what "digital" actually means- isn't actually that much better when it comes down to it. Yeah, every man and his dog is obsessed with his smartphone in a way that only marginalised geeks were with technology back in the day- but while they know how to use the Android interface, do they actually understand even at a basic level how the underlying technology (e.g. the Internet and computers) work? They know how many gigabytes is a decent amount for what they want to use, but do they understand what a gigabyte- or rather a byte- actually is? I suspect most people don't. Anyway, as I said, I expect that from the mainstream media, I expect better from Slashdot contributors... except I don't any more.
Back in the day, when Lucas was just a filmmaker, Star Wars was conceived literally as "a cowboy western in space". It was SUPPOSED to be action-packed and a little cheesy
As far as I'm aware, it was heavily influenced by the original Flash Gordon and similar serials from the 1930s- apparently Lucas originally started out trying to get the rights to remake Flash Gordon. You can even see signs of this in the stylised screen wipes, which a lot of people now associate with Star Wars and don't realise are an obvious homage to the use of those wipes in those old serials.
:-)
(The final script also apparently owes a lot to the 1958 Japanese film, The Hidden Fortress).
Regardless, whether or not its influences count as "cowboy western", it was undeniably influenced by- and to some extent meant as a modernised version of- those old pulp fiction serials, regardless of whether or not some people take it a little too seriously.
Someone made the perceptive comment that whereas the original Star Wars trilogy was influenced by all those old films, the problem with the prequels was that they were influenced by Star Wars.
Well, that and (a) the fact that George Lucas was by then so powerful that no-one was able to stand up to him in the way they did on the original films (i.e. no-one to say "you can type this shit, but you can't say it" or change the famous Leia/Solo "I know" exchange) and it seems clear that most people think Lucas's work strongly benefited from having to accept such external input and collaboration. And (b) The fact that the prequels- what I saw of them- seemed more po-faced and aware of their own (inflated) "seriousness", aside from the designated- and maligned- comic relief.
Disclaimer: I was never a rabid fan of the originals anyway, and I always found C3PO (who I keep wanting to call CP3O) a bit annoying too. But I can see why people like them on the original level they were intended, and I can understand why some people might take them more seriously than that... I just don't necessarily agree that it's entirely justified.
It would be hard to argue that Apple's decision to leave out the floppy drive didn't cause the situation we had 5 years later.
It wouldn't be hard to argue that at all! (#)
:-)
As I said, CD writers were already getting cheaper by the late 90s, and Apple can hardly claim credit for hastening their adoption since they didn't even include one.
Yes, the 1.44MB floppy format's capacity was already outdated and starting to look badly out of sync with the sort of file sizes and uses common by the late 90s (cf. the rapidly-growing capacity of hard drives, and the amount of data already-widespread CD-ROMs could hold). The pressure for a replacement was already there in the PC market, the only problem was that no realistic alternative at a practical price had received universal adoption by then. Apple's abolition of the floppy didn't provide a solution at all, it only forced their users to buy external floppy drives.
At best, as the other guy suggested, Apple provide a marginal level of forward pressure to something that would have happened anyway.
If anything, what Apple *do* deserve some credit for is encouraging the adoption of USB, whose time had- or should have- arrived by then. And even that was available in PCs at the time- the one I bought 3 or 4 months before the iMac came out included USB, the problem was that it wasn't that well-supported, and there seemed to be no hurry to do so. So maybe they helped that- and it could be argued, indirectly helped the adoption of USB pen drives several years later- but even that was by forcing the issue (i.e. abolishing legacy ports), and I suspect that USB would have taken off eventually anyway. At least in that case they included a realistic alternative, unlike with the abolition of the floppy.
(#) I think your nickname gives away your slightly partisan nature
Apple has always been doing stuff like this. I remember when they removed 3.5" floppy drive [..] Cue a lot of companies having to buy external floppy drives at ridiculous prices.
Don't know if you were thinking of the original late-90s iMac, which Apple made a big hurrah about not including a floppy drive. Except that- for all its archaicness- there was still no universal affordable alternative to the floppy (#), which is why almost every bondi blue iMac you saw had a external floppy (in matching colours) hanging off it anyway!! (Ironically far less tidy and aesthetically pleasing than having it built in like the CD reader would have been).
Had they done that five years later, yeah, it'd have been more sensible. Circa 1998, it was just a contrived anti-feature that gave Apple a "we're so futuristic" selling point anyway, one that fanboys still trumpet today.
(#) CD writers were starting to come down in price quite fast by the late-90s, but they still weren't cheap enough at that point to be included as a default option, which would explain why Apple didn't even include one! The Internet (which IIRC was one of their suggestions for transferring files) was still 56kbps dial-up even for most people that *did* have it, and far from everyone did back then (remember that the other person you wanted to exchange files with would *also* need Internet access). Pen drives weren't even around then- Wikipedia claims that the first ones came out in 2000- and would take quite a bit longer to reach dirt-cheap floppy-replacing affordability.
Crap brands who bought the name of a previously respected company, e.g. Polaroid
Interestingly, the "Polaroid" camera listed there (the Polaroid 300 / Polaroid PIC-300) is actually just a *Fujifilm* Instax Mini 7 camera. That's right- the only camera Polaroid now sell that uses anything like the traditional Polaroid film technology is actually one made by Fujifilm (who licensed the patents from Polaroid)!
The current owners of the Polaroid brand *do* appear to be treating the instant photography line with a little more respect than the previous owners (who cancelled the original Polaroid film cameras- the only non-licensed thing they did, as even "their" digital cameras had simply been licensed-out rebrands). But outside that, they're still continuing the habit of whoring out the Polaroid name to random third parties for rebranding cheap tat no-name electronics, such as LCD televisions. In fact, in the UK, they're actually letting the supermarket chain Asda use it (in effect) as an own-brand for audiovisual products.
So, yeah, the Polaroid name *is* being used for random tat, but in this case, the "Polaroid 300" is actually just a rebranded Fujifilm model that gets decent reviews. Though I'd probably just go for the Fujifilm one myself anyway.
So is it Britain or England? I'ts not 'rocket science' guys.
As the other guy said, Britain or England are both correct, since England is a part of Britain and despite their position quite some distance from the mainland, the Scilly Isles are still considered part of England.
:-/
As a nationalistic Scot, I dislike when "England" and "Britain" are used interchangeably, and the headline/summary discrepancy does smack of that being the reason- however, since it was still technically correct I wasn't going to make a deal of it until you made that comment.
(You can stop reading here if you don't want a confusingly-detailed breakdown of the various terms. Just at least do me a favour as long as I have to remain technically British and don't assume "English" and "British" are synonyms! )
FWIW, if one wants to start nitpicking, the term "Britain" on its own isn't really well-enough defined in modern usage to argue over- beyond the fact it definitely *isn't* synonymous with "England". Generally "Britain" tends to be used even by people here as synonymous with the political state of the United Kingdom (i.e. the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"). "Great Britain" is the geographic term for the main island including Scotland, England and Wales, but not Northern Ireland, hence the full name of the UK. Meanwhile, the "British Isles"- a geographic term- includes the island of Ireland (part of which is of course an entirely independent country), along with some others such as the Isle of Man and the aforementioned Scilly Isles. (Some people in the Irish Republic dislike the term "British Isles", which is understandable given the use of "British" above).
What's really going to bake your noodle is that whereas the Scilly Isles are considered part of England, the Isle of Man, despite being a British crown dependency roughly the same distance from the mainland, isn't even technically a part of the United Kingdom itself...
Actually, now that I've looked into it, the Channel Islands (i.e. Guernsey and Jersey) are also considered a part of the "British Isles"- a nominally geographic term- despite the fact they're far closer to- and more obviously associated with- France. One might suspect they were only counted as part of the "British Isles" for political reasons, since they're British crown dependencies, albeit not a part of the UK itself (like the Isle of Man).
TWX: "Betamax" probably encompasses more than simply the end-consumer tape. "SuperBeta" is a common commercial standard...
Farmer Tim: The format used in broadcast was called Betacam (replaced by Betacam SP, Digibeta, Betacam SX and HDCAM in the same physical format, all incompatible with Betamax)
Indeed... came here to say this, want to say it again in bold text as people keep getting it wrong anyway.
:-)
*** REGULAR BETAMAX WAS *NEVER* WIDELY USED AS A PROFESSIONAL FORMAT. YOU'RE THINKING OF "BETACAM", A SEPARATE FORMAT WHOSE ORIGINAL VERSIONS USED THE SAME CASSETTE AND TAPE DESIGN, BUT HAD AN ENTIRELY INCOMPATIBLE AND MUCH HIGHER QUALITY RECORDING FORMAT! (And ran the tape at a much higher speed) ***
Ahem... thank you.
Anyway, minor credit to the GP for at least not *quite* repeating this fallacy in its usual form, but yeah, he's still wrong in confusing Betacam with SuperBeta, a marginally-improved and mostly-compatible version of the consumer format.
TWX:much in the same way that "SuperVHS" was a common commercial standard
NO IT BLOODY WELL WASN'T!!!
;-) SuperVHS was a consumer format... where did you get this (mis-)information?!
Jeez, I'm taking that "minor credit" back!
Apparently they tried creating a professional format called "M" which used the VHS cassette design but- like Betacam- had a much higher tape speed and entirely-incompatible recording format compared to its consumer sibling. Apparently it flopped and a later version called "MII" enjoyed moderate success at best.
I read your comment and was about to post the link to "The Market for Lemons" until I got to the end and realised that's exactly the situation you'd spotted. :-)
the BBC's high-quality disc extras do not seem to have made the jump from disc to digital
"Disc to digital"? Are you comparing it to the releases on analogue formats such as Laserdisc and CED?
Or is this just another example of the stupid and lazy misappropriation of "digital" to mean synonymous with "online" or "download" and contrast with non-online formats such as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Compact Disc Digital-F******-Audio"? (Yes, the fact that CD was digital was one of its major selling points).
That's kind of understandable (not forgivable, but understandable) on crappy mainstream sites written by and for people who neither know nor care as much about technology as they'd like to think. (#) OTOH, I don't think it even counts as nitpicking to expect better from a site like Slashdot which is supposed to cater- at least it used to- for actual geeks and not just boys toys' gadget fetishists who think they're geeks because it's cool now and they buy a new smartphone every 18 months.
(#) I'd be willing to bet that despite the man-on-the-street's apparent increased familiarity and comfort with digital and electronic devices compared with 30 to 40 years ago, most people still don't understand as much about the underlying technology as this would suggest, and probably still wouldn't be able to explain what "digital" means.
Should Star Trek be more about Ghosts? by Dervish ("Banned User" (!))
Maybe to revitalise the series it needs a more dark, ethereal spooky slant.
I have come up with three pitches for a sort of Trek meets X-files type show where Starfleet investigators delve into the supernatural.
Here are my first three ideas:
Some poossible stories to feature ghosts:
1) Starfleet Command is haunted by the wraith of a ship designer who is about to die but has projected his soul into the ship to make starships alive - Starfleet loves the new ships and the designer has to kill murderers and psycopaths to put their souls into battleships so he goes around murdering new people.
2) The Wormhole Aliens reveal to the Bajorans that all the Bajorans ever to have lived have their spirits in the Celestial Temple (wormhole) but are to be wiped out because the Prophets are cross with Bajor joining the Federation. Colonel Kira has to get Starfleets best scientists (Data, Bashir and Barclay) to send her spirit into the Temple to find Sisko and see what is going on.
3) Little Rene's gost can't find peace bercause of the horrible burning death he suffered in France. Picard, tormented by the ghosts pleas for help from his uncle, journeys back to France and discovers Rene and his famnily were murdered by Section 31 agents as part of a strange plot. Picard discovers the truth behind the reality of ghosts which has been hidden for millenia...
I think Star Trek should feature ghosts more heavily and these 3 ideas would be very exciting.
Disclaimer: No, I am not "Dervish". Fortunately. :-) I genuinely don't know if he/she is for real, but that's a strange thread. Shame that his "interesting" artist's impression of the ghost character (bad MS Paint on top of drawing of generic Star Trek ship deck, amusingly naff) is no longer on ImageShack.
I like this reply:-
Bizarre thread. It's a bit like asking whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be more about talking haddock - it could be, but it'd be a very different show.
Yeah, but try getting vacuum to put in those tubes -- there's nothing available.
That sucks.
Was going to make the same joke, but you got there first! Sorry I don't have any mod points. :-/
To be fair, most "portable" video recording systems in the early 70's were skip frame.
I remember reading about the Cartrivision, and being willing to cut the limitations described some slack on the basis that it came out in 1972, which is *very* early on in terms of domestic videocassette recorders.
That was, until I'd remembered that the Philips N1500 also came out in 1972 and didn't have a lot of those limitations. It was the first model to support their flop "Video Cassette Recording (VCR)" format. In particular, it doesn't appear to have been skip frame. In fact, from what I've read, the N1500 appears to have been far closer in design and execution to later video formats like VHS and Betamax.
That's not to say it was perfect- apparently there were problems with the design of the reel-on-reel tape mechanism and feed, and later formats increased tape efficiency by removing the need for a guard band, amongst other improvements. Still, it looks to have been more advanced than Cartrivision.
Not only does the current article itself mention the N1500, but reading it more closely it actually makes basically the same points I made above about its technical superiority and closer resemblance to later machines!
In Cartrivision's defence, the OP's comment that it had "no rewind" is incorrect; the "no rewind" only applied to rental tapes used in domestic recorders; i.e. it was an anti-feature designed to ensure once-only viewing, but didn't apply to regular tapes.
According to Betteridge's law of headlines: No.
Yawn... years later, there are still oh-so-clever people kneejerk yelling "Betteridge" in response to every headline phrased as a question, not understanding what the original point of Betteridge's law actually was.
Hint; this isn't it, it's a (probably) legitimate question, and even if it was a crap attempt to kick-start a discussion by phrasing it in that form, it's still not an example of Betteridge.
On the flip side, there are less serious gamers like myself (*) who might consider the buying the 3DS, but would be put off by the fact that to access certain hidden features- or, more seriously, advantages- in games *that you'd already paid for*, you then had to shell out more for these figures which you have no interest in, nor space in your house for.
If some people like that- good for them. But personally, if I'm expected to buy into this sort of thing to get full use out of a 3DS, I'm not even going to bother.
Probably Nintendo have done their sums and research and estimated that they'll make more from tying their consoles to the Amiibo than they'll lose. Maybe they got those sums right, and maybe they didn't- but even if they did, it's possibly not the 100% win that you think it is.
(*) Or rather, people who are *only* interested in the games- casually or otherwise. There are probably many "serious" gamers who have no interest in collecting "Sailor Moon" Happy Meal toys with embedded RFIDs either.
I have a page where I put up a bunch of info about my experiments and memories of my Commodore systems. In the years that page has existed, the ownership of the C= logo/name/etc changed hands FIVE TIMES!
It's not just that, it's that- as far as I can tell- the rights to Commodore's various products and brands have not only been split up, but also sublicensed over the years to the point of being a confusing mess.
The company (*) that made the "Commodore 64x" around four years ago- you remember, the PC in a case that at least *looked* like a C64- also released the "Amiga 1000", "2000" and "3000". These had sod all to do with the original Amigas of those names. In fact they weren't even computers in their own right, but just home theatre PC cases, spuriously claiming to be "revivals" of the originals.
What makes this more stupid is that, at the same time, other companies were still making- under license- "real" Amigas. When I say "real", I mean they support the current version of the AmigaOS- also produced under license!- even though they aren't remotely low-level compatible with the original Amigas. (In fact, the only reason for having AmigaOS run on that overpriced, underpowered custom hardware, rather than commodity PCs seems to be as a means to subsidise AmigaOS via the very small- but incredibly diehard- remaining userbase).
Of course, these are two different things- the HTPC "Amiga" was an utterly second-rate, shameless attempt to exploit the nostalgia market with something that didn't even look like an Amiga, whereas the AmigaOne et al is aimed at the rabid diehards who are still using AmigaOS almost 20 years after it died as a mainstream proposition. But the point is that they were happy to whore out the Amiga name for two entirely different "Amigas" at the same time.
And then there's the fact that AmigaOS itself was the subject of a legal dispute. Or the fact that the current Amiga Inc. (the apparent owner/licensee of the Amiga rights) notably *isn't* the same company as the "Commodore" that owns the rights to *that* brand.
This isn't remotely complete, and doesn't even touch on the passing around and splitting of the rights in the wake of Commodore's demise. (Nostalgia-related exploitation of the brand goes back as far 1998- just four years after Commodore's demise- when the "Commodore 64" name was used on a crappy low-powered web PC). The point is that the rights are all over the place and have been whored out all over the shop.
It hardly matters if this latest b******t attempt to slap a "Commodore Pet" badge on a mediocre Android smartphone and claim it as a revival of the Pet (even though it was to come with Vic 20 and C64- not Pet!- emulators that any Android device could run) is "officially" endorsed or not. It's all crap, who gives a toss anyway?
(*) "Commodore USA", who were themselves just a company that had licensed the "Commodore" name from the rights holders and are now no more.
Please excuse this off-topic queue-jumping reply to your comment, but there are times when someone makes a very insightful observation that really, really should have gone in a more prominent position.
Sneak preview; three virtually identical questions of the form "How Much [language x] Should You Know For an Entry-Level [language x] Job?" going to the Dice website and "submitted" by the same Slashdot employee in just over two weeks.
Bonus; OP linked above correctly predicted this week's story and even got the language right.
That's almost funny, except that it isn't. Admittedly, Slashdot has been "going down the tubes" almost since it launched, but this is particularly crap.
Addendum; Just checked- they're all links to Dice stories, not even cherry-picked third-party ones. Enough said.
Er.... yeah. Indeed you did. I missed those, but this is utterly, utterly blatant now that it's been pointed out; this should have been posted higher- it's one of the few cases I'd forgive posting as an offtopic "reply" to an early comment in order to increase its prominence.
Here are the stories in question:-
How Much C++ Should You Know For an Entry-Level C++ Job? (May 27 2015)
How Much JavaScript Do You Need To Know For an Entry-Level Job? (4 June 2015)
Note the a gap of eight days between the stories in both cases. Note that the three stories were submitted respectively by Nerval's Lobster, Nerval's Lobster and, er... Nerval's Lobster. Who happens to work for Slashdot.
Not that I'm suggesting that the fact Slashdot is now owned by the IT and engineering careers website Dice has anything to do with it being used to push out formulaic and self-serving "submissions" like this. *cough*
Seriously, this makes even the old Slashdot "whoops, a stupid editor 'accidentally' posted the same good-for-attracting-pageviews-and-discussion story twice just as it fell off the front page" cynicism look good.
To be fair, the entire complaint of the author was that now he would have a fourth music service. In this case, the actual solution is, in fact, to not buy it.
I read the implied criticism as being that he'd have to subscribe to yet another service to get whatever content was exclusive to that one (as already happens with many video streaming services).
:-)
I didn't get the impression from his tone that he was actually moaning about being forced (as in, absolutely no choice in the matter) to buy Apple's service.
Even if Apple's streaming was just a poxy generic service with no exclusives, though, he'd still have the right to slag it off on that basis!
Did you even bother RTFS?
Yes, I did. That sounds like what the author was getting at.
Bullshit and utter nonsense. In a capitalist system, anyone can sell anything they want (within the confines of legality) and the market will determine whether that was a reasonable idea or not.
Yes, and part of the mechanism that determines this involves the free exchange of information and opinion on a given product. Whether or not people own it or not.
That was the point. What did you *still* not understand after having it explained three times?
As I *already* explained, it's an illogical and defensive extrapolation; why would someone having the right to freely sell something imply that someone else didn't have the right to share their opinion on it, regardless of whether they own or intend owning it?!
Yet people- yourself included- seem to act as if this is somehow an attack on the "free" market. It isn't; quite the opposite, as I said, the free market requires freedom of information to operate efficiently.
Go and reread what I said; you had it explained to you and you still made the same stupid mistake of assuming that "free market -> no freedom of speech to criticise" (which is what it boils down to). I'm not rehashing what I said a fourth time.
PERIOD.
Adding "PERIOD" in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS doesn't make your argument any stronger.
Whining about whether such a product or service should be allowed to exist misses the point that it's not up to you whether they should be allowed to exist or not.
Don't get the impression that anyone was denying this; rather they were criticising it. *You* were the one who jumped to this conclusion, presumably because you assume that (valid) criticism of a product is an attack on the free market- even though it's quite the opposite- and defensively start making assumptions about what people were actually saying.
If you don't like it, buy something else.
That doesn't negate anyone's right to criticise the product. But we're going round in circles here.
Sorry, how does that tie in to the post you were "replying" to?
Nobody is actually forcing you to participate in any new service, are they?
Nobody claimed that they were, though if Apple have exclusives through their service, people still may miss out if they're not using it.
That aside, your implication that any criticism of the service is invalid because people aren't being forced to buy it is the same argumentative fallacy that crops up here over and over again.