Remember back when a console just worked? SNES, NES, PS1 etc. They really DON'T make them like they use to. No, dirty contacts on the SNES/NES don't count, that was user error for not keeping it clean
So you're saying it doesn't count when you view it through the rose-coloured glasses of your childhood nostalgia and/or it messes up your case? It might get a free pass for being a part of your childhood, but it doesn't from me.
The NES could have used the traditional- and far more reliable- slot mechanism used in the Atari VCS et al, but they intentionally used that video-style loading mechanism (and designed a robot toy accessory) to distance themselves from the former, because consoles were seriously out of favour with retailers at that point.
Which makes business sense, but doesn't change the fact that they intentionally went with an inferior and more error-prone design to achieve it.
They seem to have been one of the first places I know of to cater to geeks. They don't just have look it's shinny things, but things, even if they are toys, that are interesting in their own right.
I'd say it's quite obvious that they "got" the geek culture, but whether they're catering to that, or exploiting the obvious recognition they gave to it is highly questionable. As I said in my original comment (*), it's not that I expect geeks to be entirely anti-consumerist et al, nor even that everything ThinkGeek sells is crap. It's that ThinkGeek seems to actively- and only- promote the idea of geekdom being something that revolves around however many spuriously intelligent toys you own and nothing more.
Why rant over a site unless they are ripping you off like kleargear, has done, you buy or try to buy an item and it never gets shipped.
Why "rant" over anything that isn't directly harming you? You could apply that to countless things people complain about on Slashdot.
And I already explained what my problem with them was- that they basically appropriate and resell the "geek pride" identity as a very one-dimensional and consumerist one that revolves around buying these items. Of course, this is what companies already do with numerous demographics, but the fact is that this is a "geek" site where ThinkGeek is mentioned a lot. Besides which, I'm as entitled to me opinion as those who *do* like it.
Kleargear sound like a bunch of outright disreputable, sleazy, bullying scum and it's quite right that this story is being drawn to our attention, but that doesn't mean we can't complain about less serious- but still annoying- things if they're brought up by someone else.
FWIW, here's the longer original comment I tried to link above. (I'd inadvertantly linked to the parent thread and not my specific post).
Well Sony, here's your customers giving the finger back.
No. Sorry to tell you, but you and all the other people on Slashdot genuinely angry about the issue are a *much* smaller and less important proportion of the potential customers than the echo chamber here might lead you to think.
It's like when someone says "I'd buy [such and such locked-down gadget] if they made it more open, so they should do that". They forget that not only are they a relatively small proportion of the potential market, but that this has to be offset against the profit to be made by keeping the device closed and making lots of money from licensing fees and subscriptions on officially-approved software, i.e. milking the great unwashed masses.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of owners and potential owners never gave a toss about the Linux issue, and still don't.
I'm not saying I agree with Sony's behaviour re: the PS3 Linux controversy. On the contrary, it was bait-and-switch, and all the counter-arguments about "it's your hardware, but it's their [PSN] service and software and you don't have to upgrade and lose Linux, but Sony aren't obliged to provide access to PSN and new software if you don't" are disingenuous. The machine was sold with the expectation that it can run new release software, and that it can access the PSN.
But it doesn't change the fact that if Sony has to choose between screwing over and alienating a few thousand customers (*) in this way and closing a hole that might deprive them of income from millions of others, the former don't even count as a rounding error.
(*) I'm only counting about the ones who put their money where their mouth is, not the far larger number who'll complain vehemently in Slashdot about issues like this, but when push comes to shove will hand over the money for some shiny new product or console, often with a half-baked excuse. Some people here *do* stand up for what they believe in, but nowhere near as many as the most vocal comments might lead you to believe.
I was going to comment that Dice hasn't done anything to ruin thinkgeek yet, but they don't actually own that one.
What's so great about ThinkGeek anyway? When it comes down to it, they're basically just a seller of novelty gadgets and boys toys with a geek-oriented marketing angle.
I've ranted about them previously, but to tl;dr that, the problem is that in (rather successfully) using this angle to sell their gimmicks, they presented and promoted a relentlessly consumerist view of what it is to be a geek... both by exploting the need to identify and belong (show how much of a proud geek and/or fan of this geek-popular TV show you are by owning this gizmo!) and by flattery (owning this stuff shows that you're clever!).
Yes I do- that's why I mentioned that the prospect of a middle-aged NSA guy (or Snapchat employee) perving over their nuddie pics- real or perceived- could have a seriously damaging effect on its popularity.
I've heard of it because my children are using it
It's basking in it's 15-minute worth of glory
I've heard of it, but never used it. I know that it's an app that lets you send images ("snaps") to others that appear on their phone for a number of seconds before allegedly disappearing irretrievably. (*) That's it. It sounds like a "tens of millions of dollars if it *really* takes off" business, not a $3bn one.
Yes, I appreciate that with these things, it's as much the established user base that's more important, but I don't see how this can have the all-encompassing network effect that will lock users in to the same extent as with Facebook itself. It's not like your social life is going to end if you stop using it (or have I missed something?) and it's a one trick pony that's vulnerable to becoming boring- and abandoned- by the notoriously fickle teenage demographic who are its primary users. What's stopping anyone else from doing something similar or better?
So, yeah. It's definitely not worth $3bn, and this is definitely "bubble" territory. The guy no doubt thinks he'll get more from other people- personally, if I was in his position, I'd take the money and run even if there was a possibility of $4bn... the possibility of the bubble bursting before you see that and the company losing 90% of its value is a real possibility.
Especially if the obvious hole in the deletion mechanism becomes more widely known and more widely exploited and/or a story breaks that the images *aren't* being deleted from Snapchat's servers after downloading as they claim and/or someone else has access to them, e.g. the NSA. While 14-year-olds sending underage nude pics of themselves to their girl/boyfriend won't be bothered about the legality, they might be more put off by the fact that they're out there permanently or being viewed by some middle-aged guy in a government agency. (The "old enough to be their Dad" bit being applicable here, not the government).
(*) Because we all know that once you've uploaded something to another user's device that's out of your control, there's no prospect of them getting round the auto-deletion, except where there is, and I heard of workarounds some time back.
I can relate to the "mind share" thing. In the UK, the Atari 800 and its successors weren't that well-known either- I wasn't aware of them until shortly before I got one. It was very much "second tier" in terms of support- software et al was available, but nowhere near as much (nor as easily available) as for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC.
But I'm not sure the mindshare issue (at least as far as the US market goes) contradicts what I said; desirability, popularity and awareness of formats was (and is) self-reinforcing due to the "network effect". That's why (e.g.) the ZX Spectrum remained popular here long after it was outdated- it was the first machine with hi-res colour graphics and sound at a mass-market price in the UK, and only the C64 enjoyed comparable support.
Additional; Atari lost the market because they messed up at a critical point in the home computer wars. Circa 1983 or so, Commodore- under Jack Tramiel- launched a ruthless price war in the US that saw the C64 price forced down very low (making it very good value for what it was). This was around the point Atari launched the 1200XL, which was *more* expensive than the 800 (at a time when the line should have been made cheaper) and had expansion and compatibility issues that resulted in it flopping.
Eventually the cheaper-to-produce 600XL and 800XL replaced it, but that misstep probably cost them the market and the C64 dominated after that.
The Atari 800 was my first computer, and it was simply awful.
Er, no it wasn't. Whether or not the manuals were crap doesn't make it a bad machine. This wasn't originally a "my computer is better than yours" discussion, but since you raised the issue...
While Atari may have been dicks in terms of documentation release, the Atari 800 was nevertheless a state-of-the-art computer by the standards of its time (late 70s) and still comparable to the later C64 in terms of its capabilities (better in some respects, weaker in others).
It beat the heck out of the original Apple II, a clever design for its time, but which was quickly surpassed technically and presumably justified its continued high price on the US market due to its established support.
The much-improved Apple IIc, as far as I can tell, was a far more expensive machine than the Atari 800 at the time of its 1984 launch ($1295 according to Wikipedia). It's also unfair to condemn the Atari 800 for its cassette performance- you could easily buy an Atari 800 and disk drive for far less than the Apple IIc (and AFAIK most Atari users in the US *did* use disks by that point). Wouldn't it be much fairer to compare the Apple IIc to the Amiga 1000 which launched the next year at a comparable price?:-)
Apple should have done it themselves *before* ending the manufacturing of the Apple//
While I personally find Apple fans' stylisation of the Apple II and III names in ordinary text (*) somewhat cutesy, self-conscious and contrived, I'd say that if you *are* going to do it, surely it's meant to be rendered as "Apple ][" ? I thought that the slanty "/" belonged on the Apple III, sorry.... Apple///:-)
Actually, having checked, apparently the Apple IIe used the slanty lettering, so I guess you're allowed to use it there, but *only* for the Apple//e, not the original Apple ][.
Saint Jobs would strike you down for your crimes against typography...;-/
(*) Attempting to mimic the *graphical* stylisation of the font on the respective case logos, making the text-only usage borderline ASCII-art
Back in the day, the source code for Atari DOS was included in a published book that explained exactly how it worked. That's one of the things that was great about that platform--so much information was readily available.
Yes, but possibly in spite of, rather then because of, Atari themselves. According to the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, the Atari 800 was treated as a closed platform in the early days, and Atari wouldn't divulge documentation on its inner workings;
Transferring his new assembly-language skills to the Atari was difficult. The Atari was a "closed machine". This meant that Atari sequestered the information concerning the specific results you got by using microprocessor assembly-language commands. It was as if Atari did not want you to be able to write on it. It was the antithesis of the Hacker Ethic. John would write Atari's people and even call them on the telephone with questions; the voices on the phone would be cold, bearing no help. John figured Atari was acting that way to suppress any competition to its own software division. This was not a good reason at all to close your machine. (Say what you would about Apple, the machine was "open", its secrets available to all and sundry). So John was left to ponder the Atari's mysteries, wondering why Atari technicians told him that the 800 gave you only four colors in the graphics mode, while on the software they released for it, games like "basketball" and "Super Breakout", there were clearly more than eight colors.
Of course, it's true that all this stuff was *later* very well-documented, but how much Atari helped in that is open to question (*). It's certainly well-known that Atari were assholes in general in their late-70s/early-80s heyday, and they definitely tried to suppress third-party development of VCS games. So though I've heard enough people disputing aspects of "Hackers" not to take it as gospel, it does seem to tie in with what I've heard about Atari at the time.
The Atari DOS book doesn't appear to have been published by Atari themselves, and whether it was with their blessing, I don't know. "Mapping the Atari" wasn't an official publication either.
While Atari released documentation, I suspect it was at the level *they* wanted people to be using the machine at. And for all their plus points, the 400 and 800 were clearly intended as more closed, consumer-oriented machines. The 800 did have some good expansion capabilities, but this was clearly meant to be done via its official ports and interfaces designed for that use. The lower-end version, the Atari 400 had far less official expansion capability, e.g. it was never originally designed to support RAM expansion- it was possible, but apparently required far less friendly hardware modifications and installation directly onto the motherboard.
The 1200XL was notoriously even more closed (and flopped massively). FWIW, the BASIC "manual" that came with my 800XL was a paltry pamphlet, and the official DOS 3 manual was nicely-presented, but certainly not deep.
Of course, it all worked out in the end, but I guess what I'm saying is that let's not romanticise the original intentions of companies like Atari back then, who'd have been happy to sit on those secrets and not release them to their users (who they viewed as potential competition).
(*) Those early days (1979 onwards) were before my time- I got my 800XL in 1986, so I can't speak from personal experience.
And of course, this assumes that it's the actual "TempleOS" guy behind the account, and not just a troll who'd been pretending in order to pull something like this.
Occasionally, this comes at a cost to human life, such as Thatcher's deliberate underinvestment in the railways, followed by Major's spinning off of Railtrack without any clear identification as to who is responsible for maintenance. But usually it's just a huge fucking waste of money, and the privatised industry ends up enjoying multiple subsidies and regulatory capture.
Ooh... you're so cynical, but be fair- it's resulted in a far more efficient and low-cost railway system that's affordable by everyone in the country.
Oh wait, no it hasn't. It's given us railways that cost far more than comparable systems in other countries, resulting in obscenely priced tickets that are only affordable to well-paid professionals. You know it's bad when the first result from Googling "British railways expensive compared" is a f*****g Daily Mail article making this point.
It looks to have a modified version of the 911 engine, so probably not too bad. Most "supercars" like this are Porsches or Ferrari/Lamborghinis with a body kit, sometimes an engine swap as well.
So, yeah. Just another example of some "expensive" bulls**t being little more than a much less expensive thing with lots of gratuitous and tacky bling glued on. (*)
I mean, so what? I could make the "world's most expensive car" by gluing the Koh-i-Noor diamond to a 1998 Vauxhall Corsa. Who cares? It's still just a clapped-out Vauxhall Corsa.
Then again, it's entirely appropriate that this would be unveiled at the Dubai motor show, held in a location notorious for its gratuitous bling architecture such as the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world that needs trucks to remove all the crap because they don't even have the sewage infrastructure. Yeah, I'm impressed guys... come back when you can actually develop a supercar- or half-modern society- yourselves. This doesn't count.
(*) Ironically, the reason why so many products at this level of "premium" *are* just bog-standard kit with jewels glued on is because they couldn't *actually* afford to pay what it would cost to develop a car that was (e.g.) 25% faster than the current record-holder or a phone that was twice as fast and had twice as high resolution as the current best model... unless they were to sell in large numbers, which would entirely defeat the purpose. The development and tooling cost would render them ludicrously expensive even for the richest people in the world- many of these things only work out as being economic because they're intended to sell in the millions to us plebs. You can wave several million dollars at Intel, and you still won't get a processor that's twice as fast as their current high-end mass-market model. Ha ha, nice Corsa you've got there.:-P
The proof that they were very much off base was with regards to the Starship Trooper sequals, that went from bad to worse and ended up so horrible that they became direct to video releases instead. [..] They remind me more of the Star Wars Christmas Special in terms of production quality.
According to its Wikipedia article, even Starship Troopers 2 (i.e. the first sequel) was straight to video. The fact that it was shot on a $7m budget- paltry for a film of that type rather than the original's $105m- all but proves it was never intended for cinema release at any point.
They remind me more of the Star Wars Christmas Special in terms of production quality.
As for the production quality, well that's what you get with straight-to-video. I doubt the creative team (i.e. crew, screenwriters et al) on the sequels had much to do with the original film either, so I don't think one can draw as many conclusions from it as you think. Straight-to-video sequels to big budget blockbusters are generally cheap, cynical cash-ins, nothing more.
It would be easy to say that Netflix killed Blockbuster, and certainly Blockbuster inflicted harm on themselves. Netflix did play a part but Blockbuster's problems come from a business model that came under threat from multiple fronts. [..] Even at the same price of a Blockbuster rental, [VOD] consumers didn't have to physically get and return the title.
This is true, but there's one important factor everyone missed (and I overlooked myself in the past until someone mentioned it)- the falling cost of DVDs over the past decade has often made it barely cheaper to rent instead of buy. With box sets, it's usually a no brainer- the equivalent cost of each disc is frequently below what most places would bother charging for rental.
To be fair, this is less the case for the new-release blockbuster DVDs which Blockbuster specialise in (apparently, I'm never in there myself), as those tend to be still quite expensive when new. Even so, nowdays it's surprising how fast the retail price falls after this.
Prerecorded videotapes were apparently massively expensive in the late 70s and early 80s, and even when prices on retail tapes had fallen it still made sense to rent if you were only going to watch it once. Nowadays? Not so much, if at all.
They closed a lot of stores, but many still remained. Until now.
Ironically, this mirrors the situation with the UK chain which just went bankrupt for the *second* time a little over a week ago, having first gone under in January and closed a number of shops. (I assume it was a legally separate and/or spun-off business of the US parent before it first went bankrupt, as this seems to have happened independent of the troubles of the US Blockbuster).
I've no idea if any stores will remain open this time, but given that there was no obvious future for the chain when they *first* went bankrupt, it'd be surprising if it happened again.
Shame for the remaining people that worked there, but no surprise, and not a sad loss. Blockbuster entered the independent store and small chain dominated UK market at the end of the 80s (by buying the then largest rental chain), and ruthlessly exploited its US parent's size and connections to drive them almost all out of business- via predatory means- during the next decade, leaving a virtual monoculture by the turn of the millennium. From a comment on this page by Madiain28 at the time of their *first* bankruptcy earlier this year:-
This was a company owned by Viacom that is also parent company of most of the big distribution rental market. They showed no mercy in the late eighties and nineties closing thousands of independent rental shops by opening next door to them. Whilst independent shops had to pay between £30-60 per copy of film blockbuster could bulk receive from distributors virtually costing nothing just rejigging figures. They would strike a deal taking thousands of copies at a cost of about £5 then mass rent for a few weeks and sell off for more than the initial cost. Whilst the small independents struggled to buy a few copies and make any profit.
I worked part time for them when I was at college in the early nineties and there underlying ethos was to ensure they shut down any competition in the area by undercutting then as soon as they got rid of the competitor they whacked the prices up. 20 years ago they were charging £3.50 to £4 per night rental in Aberdeen once they closed Global video down.
He/she also adds:-
With the launch of Netflix and Lovefilm it was inevitable. As the market leader in the rental market they did not invest in online streaming or offer comparable deals in store as even their own online packages for post rental were far cheaper. Although I sympathise with all the staff as a company they deserve to go.
In short, nasty soulless corporate chain that monopolised the market then got so used to the nice stream of easy income and the cushion of monopoly status that they could "afford" not to respond immediately to changes in the market... so by the time things got bad enough to start affecting them it was too late for them to change. What a shame. *cough*
FWIW, the current owners (who bought it after the January bankruptcy and closure of some stores) were a private equity firm. While I might wonder why they bought the company when the chain was already clearly doomed by that point, it's well known that many private equity firms come out of these bankruptcies still having made a profit by dubious means (i.e. leaching the value out of the company and leaving the debts behind) and that may well have been the intent here, regardless of whether Blockbuster UK had a future or not.
Based on the photo in TFA, its pretty obviously CGI*
Bingo. Why hasn't anyone else said this- it's *exactly* what I first thought when I saw this story on the BBC!
The figure still has that very "uncanny valley" look that gives it away (even if you didn't realise, it would still likely be freaking out your subconscious at some level.) It also doesn't look like a real person in front of a webcam- not crappy enough. It'd need (e.g.) to be able to handle highlights > 100% then render them in the same way as a crap-quality webcam does under bad over-contrasty lighting. Ditto softness, lack of focus, noise... webcams are not flattering (*) but they're unflattering in a very un-CGI way.
It's quite possible that they *are* post-processing the generated image to look more "webcammish", which would reduce the "over-perfect" appearance and obscure some of the unnaturalness- but even the movement of the head shown in the video (which wouldn't be affected by the processing) looks CGI-ish.
Basically, either (a) they're lying that this is representative of the video they used, or (b) a lot of the people they "caught" are very gullible.
(*) As evidenced by seeing my own badly-lit face distorted through a crappy wide-angle lensed webcam. Of course, some people might say this is because I'm an ugly git as well...
Japan's rapidly-ageing population gives money to researchers to build robotic servants that address the lack of young people to look after them in years to come... and gets rock-paper-scissors-bot instead.
I never thought of guising as being "tradition" - it was just something you did.
Well, to be fair, neither did I at the time- quite the opposite. As you say, it was "just something you did". That's why I mentioned in my original post that it wasn't something that was really "forced".
It's only in recent years, after I realised that something which I did as a kid- and which even lasted some time after that, little over 20 years ago- seems like something from a long past age. That would be understandable if it was a technological change, but it's not. (Though maybe the US influence was increased via greater penetration of the Internet?)
When the sun rises about 8am, and sets around 4pm, then I suppose that makes for a lot of winter festivals to pass the time...
Sad thing is I used to think winter, with its snow and dark evenings, was cool as a kid. (When I was in early school and had to go to bed not long after 7PM(!!), I *hated* going to sleep in summer with the sun brightly shining against the light curtains- ugh.)
Nowadays I don't like snow- it's not too bad when it's fresh, but a PITA when it turns to slush- or worse, isn't cleared and gets compressed and re-frozen into solid ice.
But as an adult, I find- as you say- the problem with winter, which has grown more obvious to me as I get older, is the lack of daylight. I'm not an especially "hot weather" person or into very bright sun, and never have been, but I do like having daylight well into the evening, or even just during the bloody daytime. As you say, in December and early January, the sun sets around (or before!) 4PM and my tolerance for that has gone right down.
Dammit, I'm really sounding old and grumpy now. >:-(
Including this as much for my own reference, but I spoke to two people at work today; one was 32 (i.e. 5 or 6 years younger than me, probably guising in the late 80s/early 90s), the other was 21 (i.e. late 90s/early-00s). The 32-year-old shared my experience of turnip lanterns- the 21-year old did not, had a pumpkin and didn't relate to the turnip thing at all. So I'd say I was roughly correct when I pinpointed the 90s as when things changed- and within a relatively short period of time too, it seems.
Don't stereotype all of us south of the border in the same way. Hallowe'en seems pretty irrelevant where I live in west London.
I'm not sure why you're complaining about stereotyping- my comment was essentially that "until recently the English didn't really celebrate or care about Hallowe'en that much"... and your second sentence (and the rest of your comment) seems to back this up rather than contradicting it!
It's true that the "adults dressing up for Hallowe'en" thing seems to be more an American thing (or at least one would get that impression from watching US shows, which isn't always an accurate representation of reality). Even in 80s Scotland, adult involvement was mainly in making costumes for the kids and/or humouring their guising routines and giving them candy^w sweets or money.:-)
Even nowadays, the more US-style Hallowe'en culture commercialised by UK businesses seems to be targeted mainly at children. It's still not really a big adult thing here, either in Scotland or England.
However, bear in mind that if they were caught doing this (something that they supposedly cracked down on from the 80s onwards) they were likely to be banned from the charts- something that was also parodied in More Bad News when their manager tells them they've been banned because "some idiot apparently" went into a shop and bought loads of copies.
In fact, this post suggests that Spotify are doing pretty much that.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember back when a console just worked? SNES, NES, PS1 etc. They really DON'T make them like they use to. No, dirty contacts on the SNES/NES don't count, that was user error for not keeping it clean
So you're saying it doesn't count when you view it through the rose-coloured glasses of your childhood nostalgia and/or it messes up your case? It might get a free pass for being a part of your childhood, but it doesn't from me.
The NES could have used the traditional- and far more reliable- slot mechanism used in the Atari VCS et al, but they intentionally used that video-style loading mechanism (and designed a robot toy accessory) to distance themselves from the former, because consoles were seriously out of favour with retailers at that point.
Which makes business sense, but doesn't change the fact that they intentionally went with an inferior and more error-prone design to achieve it.
They seem to have been one of the first places I know of to cater to geeks. They don't just have look it's shinny things, but things, even if they are toys, that are interesting in their own right.
I'd say it's quite obvious that they "got" the geek culture, but whether they're catering to that, or exploiting the obvious recognition they gave to it is highly questionable. As I said in my original comment (*), it's not that I expect geeks to be entirely anti-consumerist et al, nor even that everything ThinkGeek sells is crap. It's that ThinkGeek seems to actively- and only- promote the idea of geekdom being something that revolves around however many spuriously intelligent toys you own and nothing more.
(*) Wrong link given previously.
Additional; wrong link (to parent thread rather than my post) given above. Here's the right one.
Why rant over a site unless they are ripping you off like kleargear, has done, you buy or try to buy an item and it never gets shipped.
Why "rant" over anything that isn't directly harming you? You could apply that to countless things people complain about on Slashdot.
And I already explained what my problem with them was- that they basically appropriate and resell the "geek pride" identity as a very one-dimensional and consumerist one that revolves around buying these items. Of course, this is what companies already do with numerous demographics, but the fact is that this is a "geek" site where ThinkGeek is mentioned a lot. Besides which, I'm as entitled to me opinion as those who *do* like it.
Kleargear sound like a bunch of outright disreputable, sleazy, bullying scum and it's quite right that this story is being drawn to our attention, but that doesn't mean we can't complain about less serious- but still annoying- things if they're brought up by someone else.
FWIW, here's the longer original comment I tried to link above. (I'd inadvertantly linked to the parent thread and not my specific post).
Well Sony, here's your customers giving the finger back.
No. Sorry to tell you, but you and all the other people on Slashdot genuinely angry about the issue are a *much* smaller and less important proportion of the potential customers than the echo chamber here might lead you to think.
It's like when someone says "I'd buy [such and such locked-down gadget] if they made it more open, so they should do that". They forget that not only are they a relatively small proportion of the potential market, but that this has to be offset against the profit to be made by keeping the device closed and making lots of money from licensing fees and subscriptions on officially-approved software, i.e. milking the great unwashed masses.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of owners and potential owners never gave a toss about the Linux issue, and still don't.
I'm not saying I agree with Sony's behaviour re: the PS3 Linux controversy. On the contrary, it was bait-and-switch, and all the counter-arguments about "it's your hardware, but it's their [PSN] service and software and you don't have to upgrade and lose Linux, but Sony aren't obliged to provide access to PSN and new software if you don't" are disingenuous. The machine was sold with the expectation that it can run new release software, and that it can access the PSN.
But it doesn't change the fact that if Sony has to choose between screwing over and alienating a few thousand customers (*) in this way and closing a hole that might deprive them of income from millions of others, the former don't even count as a rounding error.
(*) I'm only counting about the ones who put their money where their mouth is, not the far larger number who'll complain vehemently in Slashdot about issues like this, but when push comes to shove will hand over the money for some shiny new product or console, often with a half-baked excuse. Some people here *do* stand up for what they believe in, but nowhere near as many as the most vocal comments might lead you to believe.
I was going to comment that Dice hasn't done anything to ruin thinkgeek yet, but they don't actually own that one.
What's so great about ThinkGeek anyway? When it comes down to it, they're basically just a seller of novelty gadgets and boys toys with a geek-oriented marketing angle.
I've ranted about them previously, but to tl;dr that, the problem is that in (rather successfully) using this angle to sell their gimmicks, they presented and promoted a relentlessly consumerist view of what it is to be a geek... both by exploting the need to identify and belong (show how much of a proud geek and/or fan of this geek-popular TV show you are by owning this gizmo!) and by flattery (owning this stuff shows that you're clever!).
You realize it's used by teens for sexting
Yes I do- that's why I mentioned that the prospect of a middle-aged NSA guy (or Snapchat employee) perving over their nuddie pics- real or perceived- could have a seriously damaging effect on its popularity.
I've heard of it because my children are using it It's basking in it's 15-minute worth of glory
I've heard of it, but never used it. I know that it's an app that lets you send images ("snaps") to others that appear on their phone for a number of seconds before allegedly disappearing irretrievably. (*) That's it. It sounds like a "tens of millions of dollars if it *really* takes off" business, not a $3bn one.
Yes, I appreciate that with these things, it's as much the established user base that's more important, but I don't see how this can have the all-encompassing network effect that will lock users in to the same extent as with Facebook itself. It's not like your social life is going to end if you stop using it (or have I missed something?) and it's a one trick pony that's vulnerable to becoming boring- and abandoned- by the notoriously fickle teenage demographic who are its primary users. What's stopping anyone else from doing something similar or better?
So, yeah. It's definitely not worth $3bn, and this is definitely "bubble" territory. The guy no doubt thinks he'll get more from other people- personally, if I was in his position, I'd take the money and run even if there was a possibility of $4bn... the possibility of the bubble bursting before you see that and the company losing 90% of its value is a real possibility.
Especially if the obvious hole in the deletion mechanism becomes more widely known and more widely exploited and/or a story breaks that the images *aren't* being deleted from Snapchat's servers after downloading as they claim and/or someone else has access to them, e.g. the NSA. While 14-year-olds sending underage nude pics of themselves to their girl/boyfriend won't be bothered about the legality, they might be more put off by the fact that they're out there permanently or being viewed by some middle-aged guy in a government agency. (The "old enough to be their Dad" bit being applicable here, not the government).
(*) Because we all know that once you've uploaded something to another user's device that's out of your control, there's no prospect of them getting round the auto-deletion, except where there is, and I heard of workarounds some time back.
I can relate to the "mind share" thing. In the UK, the Atari 800 and its successors weren't that well-known either- I wasn't aware of them until shortly before I got one. It was very much "second tier" in terms of support- software et al was available, but nowhere near as much (nor as easily available) as for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC.
But I'm not sure the mindshare issue (at least as far as the US market goes) contradicts what I said; desirability, popularity and awareness of formats was (and is) self-reinforcing due to the "network effect". That's why (e.g.) the ZX Spectrum remained popular here long after it was outdated- it was the first machine with hi-res colour graphics and sound at a mass-market price in the UK, and only the C64 enjoyed comparable support.
Additional; Atari lost the market because they messed up at a critical point in the home computer wars. Circa 1983 or so, Commodore- under Jack Tramiel- launched a ruthless price war in the US that saw the C64 price forced down very low (making it very good value for what it was). This was around the point Atari launched the 1200XL, which was *more* expensive than the 800 (at a time when the line should have been made cheaper) and had expansion and compatibility issues that resulted in it flopping.
Eventually the cheaper-to-produce 600XL and 800XL replaced it, but that misstep probably cost them the market and the C64 dominated after that.
The Atari 800 was my first computer, and it was simply awful.
Er, no it wasn't. Whether or not the manuals were crap doesn't make it a bad machine. This wasn't originally a "my computer is better than yours" discussion, but since you raised the issue...
:-)
While Atari may have been dicks in terms of documentation release, the Atari 800 was nevertheless a state-of-the-art computer by the standards of its time (late 70s) and still comparable to the later C64 in terms of its capabilities (better in some respects, weaker in others).
It beat the heck out of the original Apple II, a clever design for its time, but which was quickly surpassed technically and presumably justified its continued high price on the US market due to its established support.
The much-improved Apple IIc, as far as I can tell, was a far more expensive machine than the Atari 800 at the time of its 1984 launch ($1295 according to Wikipedia). It's also unfair to condemn the Atari 800 for its cassette performance- you could easily buy an Atari 800 and disk drive for far less than the Apple IIc (and AFAIK most Atari users in the US *did* use disks by that point). Wouldn't it be much fairer to compare the Apple IIc to the Amiga 1000 which launched the next year at a comparable price?
Apple should have done it themselves *before* ending the manufacturing of the Apple //
While I personally find Apple fans' stylisation of the Apple II and III names in ordinary text (*) somewhat cutesy, self-conscious and contrived, I'd say that if you *are* going to do it, surely it's meant to be rendered as "Apple ][" ? I thought that the slanty "/" belonged on the Apple III, sorry.... Apple /// :-)
//e, not the original Apple ][.
;-/
Actually, having checked, apparently the Apple IIe used the slanty lettering, so I guess you're allowed to use it there, but *only* for the Apple
Saint Jobs would strike you down for your crimes against typography...
(*) Attempting to mimic the *graphical* stylisation of the font on the respective case logos, making the text-only usage borderline ASCII-art
Back in the day, the source code for Atari DOS was included in a published book that explained exactly how it worked. That's one of the things that was great about that platform--so much information was readily available.
Yes, but possibly in spite of, rather then because of, Atari themselves. According to the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, the Atari 800 was treated as a closed platform in the early days, and Atari wouldn't divulge documentation on its inner workings;
Transferring his new assembly-language skills to the Atari was difficult. The Atari was a "closed machine". This meant that Atari sequestered the information concerning the specific results you got by using microprocessor assembly-language commands. It was as if Atari did not want you to be able to write on it. It was the antithesis of the Hacker Ethic. John would write Atari's people and even call them on the telephone with questions; the voices on the phone would be cold, bearing no help. John figured Atari was acting that way to suppress any competition to its own software division. This was not a good reason at all to close your machine. (Say what you would about Apple, the machine was "open", its secrets available to all and sundry). So John was left to ponder the Atari's mysteries, wondering why Atari technicians told him that the 800 gave you only four colors in the graphics mode, while on the software they released for it, games like "basketball" and "Super Breakout", there were clearly more than eight colors.
Of course, it's true that all this stuff was *later* very well-documented, but how much Atari helped in that is open to question (*). It's certainly well-known that Atari were assholes in general in their late-70s/early-80s heyday, and they definitely tried to suppress third-party development of VCS games. So though I've heard enough people disputing aspects of "Hackers" not to take it as gospel, it does seem to tie in with what I've heard about Atari at the time.
The Atari DOS book doesn't appear to have been published by Atari themselves, and whether it was with their blessing, I don't know. "Mapping the Atari" wasn't an official publication either.
While Atari released documentation, I suspect it was at the level *they* wanted people to be using the machine at. And for all their plus points, the 400 and 800 were clearly intended as more closed, consumer-oriented machines. The 800 did have some good expansion capabilities, but this was clearly meant to be done via its official ports and interfaces designed for that use. The lower-end version, the Atari 400 had far less official expansion capability, e.g. it was never originally designed to support RAM expansion- it was possible, but apparently required far less friendly hardware modifications and installation directly onto the motherboard.
The 1200XL was notoriously even more closed (and flopped massively). FWIW, the BASIC "manual" that came with my 800XL was a paltry pamphlet, and the official DOS 3 manual was nicely-presented, but certainly not deep.
Of course, it all worked out in the end, but I guess what I'm saying is that let's not romanticise the original intentions of companies like Atari back then, who'd have been happy to sit on those secrets and not release them to their users (who they viewed as potential competition).
(*) Those early days (1979 onwards) were before my time- I got my 800XL in 1986, so I can't speak from personal experience.
This account is like 3 days old.
And of course, this assumes that it's the actual "TempleOS" guy behind the account, and not just a troll who'd been pretending in order to pull something like this.
Occasionally, this comes at a cost to human life, such as Thatcher's deliberate underinvestment in the railways, followed by Major's spinning off of Railtrack without any clear identification as to who is responsible for maintenance. But usually it's just a huge fucking waste of money, and the privatised industry ends up enjoying multiple subsidies and regulatory capture.
Ooh... you're so cynical, but be fair- it's resulted in a far more efficient and low-cost railway system that's affordable by everyone in the country.
Oh wait, no it hasn't. It's given us railways that cost far more than comparable systems in other countries, resulting in obscenely priced tickets that are only affordable to well-paid professionals. You know it's bad when the first result from Googling "British railways expensive compared" is a f*****g Daily Mail article making this point.
It looks to have a modified version of the 911 engine, so probably not too bad. Most "supercars" like this are Porsches or Ferrari/Lamborghinis with a body kit, sometimes an engine swap as well.
So, yeah. Just another example of some "expensive" bulls**t being little more than a much less expensive thing with lots of gratuitous and tacky bling glued on. (*)
:-P
I mean, so what? I could make the "world's most expensive car" by gluing the Koh-i-Noor diamond to a 1998 Vauxhall Corsa. Who cares? It's still just a clapped-out Vauxhall Corsa.
Then again, it's entirely appropriate that this would be unveiled at the Dubai motor show, held in a location notorious for its gratuitous bling architecture such as the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world that needs trucks to remove all the crap because they don't even have the sewage infrastructure. Yeah, I'm impressed guys... come back when you can actually develop a supercar- or half-modern society- yourselves. This doesn't count.
(*) Ironically, the reason why so many products at this level of "premium" *are* just bog-standard kit with jewels glued on is because they couldn't *actually* afford to pay what it would cost to develop a car that was (e.g.) 25% faster than the current record-holder or a phone that was twice as fast and had twice as high resolution as the current best model... unless they were to sell in large numbers, which would entirely defeat the purpose. The development and tooling cost would render them ludicrously expensive even for the richest people in the world- many of these things only work out as being economic because they're intended to sell in the millions to us plebs. You can wave several million dollars at Intel, and you still won't get a processor that's twice as fast as their current high-end mass-market model. Ha ha, nice Corsa you've got there.
The proof that they were very much off base was with regards to the Starship Trooper sequals, that went from bad to worse and ended up so horrible that they became direct to video releases instead. [..] They remind me more of the Star Wars Christmas Special in terms of production quality.
According to its Wikipedia article, even Starship Troopers 2 (i.e. the first sequel) was straight to video. The fact that it was shot on a $7m budget- paltry for a film of that type rather than the original's $105m- all but proves it was never intended for cinema release at any point.
They remind me more of the Star Wars Christmas Special in terms of production quality.
As for the production quality, well that's what you get with straight-to-video. I doubt the creative team (i.e. crew, screenwriters et al) on the sequels had much to do with the original film either, so I don't think one can draw as many conclusions from it as you think. Straight-to-video sequels to big budget blockbusters are generally cheap, cynical cash-ins, nothing more.
It would be easy to say that Netflix killed Blockbuster, and certainly Blockbuster inflicted harm on themselves. Netflix did play a part but Blockbuster's problems come from a business model that came under threat from multiple fronts. [..] Even at the same price of a Blockbuster rental, [VOD] consumers didn't have to physically get and return the title.
This is true, but there's one important factor everyone missed (and I overlooked myself in the past until someone mentioned it)- the falling cost of DVDs over the past decade has often made it barely cheaper to rent instead of buy. With box sets, it's usually a no brainer- the equivalent cost of each disc is frequently below what most places would bother charging for rental.
To be fair, this is less the case for the new-release blockbuster DVDs which Blockbuster specialise in (apparently, I'm never in there myself), as those tend to be still quite expensive when new. Even so, nowdays it's surprising how fast the retail price falls after this.
Prerecorded videotapes were apparently massively expensive in the late 70s and early 80s, and even when prices on retail tapes had fallen it still made sense to rent if you were only going to watch it once. Nowadays? Not so much, if at all.
They closed a lot of stores, but many still remained. Until now.
Ironically, this mirrors the situation with the UK chain which just went bankrupt for the *second* time a little over a week ago, having first gone under in January and closed a number of shops. (I assume it was a legally separate and/or spun-off business of the US parent before it first went bankrupt, as this seems to have happened independent of the troubles of the US Blockbuster).
I've no idea if any stores will remain open this time, but given that there was no obvious future for the chain when they *first* went bankrupt, it'd be surprising if it happened again.
Shame for the remaining people that worked there, but no surprise, and not a sad loss. Blockbuster entered the independent store and small chain dominated UK market at the end of the 80s (by buying the then largest rental chain), and ruthlessly exploited its US parent's size and connections to drive them almost all out of business- via predatory means- during the next decade, leaving a virtual monoculture by the turn of the millennium. From a comment on this page by Madiain28 at the time of their *first* bankruptcy earlier this year:-
This was a company owned by Viacom that is also parent company of most of the big distribution rental market. They showed no mercy in the late eighties and nineties closing thousands of independent rental shops by opening next door to them. Whilst independent shops had to pay between £30-60 per copy of film blockbuster could bulk receive from distributors virtually costing nothing just rejigging figures. They would strike a deal taking thousands of copies at a cost of about £5 then mass rent for a few weeks and sell off for more than the initial cost. Whilst the small independents struggled to buy a few copies and make any profit.
I worked part time for them when I was at college in the early nineties and there underlying ethos was to ensure they shut down any competition in the area by undercutting then as soon as they got rid of the competitor they whacked the prices up. 20 years ago they were charging £3.50 to £4 per night rental in Aberdeen once they closed Global video down.
He/she also adds:-
With the launch of Netflix and Lovefilm it was inevitable. As the market leader in the rental market they did not invest in online streaming or offer comparable deals in store as even their own online packages for post rental were far cheaper. Although I sympathise with all the staff as a company they deserve to go.
In short, nasty soulless corporate chain that monopolised the market then got so used to the nice stream of easy income and the cushion of monopoly status that they could "afford" not to respond immediately to changes in the market... so by the time things got bad enough to start affecting them it was too late for them to change. What a shame. *cough*
FWIW, the current owners (who bought it after the January bankruptcy and closure of some stores) were a private equity firm. While I might wonder why they bought the company when the chain was already clearly doomed by that point, it's well known that many private equity firms come out of these bankruptcies still having made a profit by dubious means (i.e. leaching the value out of the company and leaving the debts behind) and that may well have been the intent here, regardless of whether Blockbuster UK had a future or not.
Based on the photo in TFA, its pretty obviously CGI*
Bingo. Why hasn't anyone else said this- it's *exactly* what I first thought when I saw this story on the BBC!
The figure still has that very "uncanny valley" look that gives it away (even if you didn't realise, it would still likely be freaking out your subconscious at some level.) It also doesn't look like a real person in front of a webcam- not crappy enough. It'd need (e.g.) to be able to handle highlights > 100% then render them in the same way as a crap-quality webcam does under bad over-contrasty lighting. Ditto softness, lack of focus, noise... webcams are not flattering (*) but they're unflattering in a very un-CGI way.
It's quite possible that they *are* post-processing the generated image to look more "webcammish", which would reduce the "over-perfect" appearance and obscure some of the unnaturalness- but even the movement of the head shown in the video (which wouldn't be affected by the processing) looks CGI-ish.
Basically, either (a) they're lying that this is representative of the video they used, or (b) a lot of the people they "caught" are very gullible.
(*) As evidenced by seeing my own badly-lit face distorted through a crappy wide-angle lensed webcam. Of course, some people might say this is because I'm an ugly git as well...
Japan's rapidly-ageing population gives money to researchers to build robotic servants that address the lack of young people to look after them in years to come... and gets rock-paper-scissors-bot instead.
I never thought of guising as being "tradition" - it was just something you did.
Well, to be fair, neither did I at the time- quite the opposite. As you say, it was "just something you did". That's why I mentioned in my original post that it wasn't something that was really "forced".
It's only in recent years, after I realised that something which I did as a kid- and which even lasted some time after that, little over 20 years ago- seems like something from a long past age. That would be understandable if it was a technological change, but it's not. (Though maybe the US influence was increased via greater penetration of the Internet?)
When the sun rises about 8am, and sets around 4pm, then I suppose that makes for a lot of winter festivals to pass the time...
Sad thing is I used to think winter, with its snow and dark evenings, was cool as a kid. (When I was in early school and had to go to bed not long after 7PM(!!), I *hated* going to sleep in summer with the sun brightly shining against the light curtains- ugh.)
Nowadays I don't like snow- it's not too bad when it's fresh, but a PITA when it turns to slush- or worse, isn't cleared and gets compressed and re-frozen into solid ice.
But as an adult, I find- as you say- the problem with winter, which has grown more obvious to me as I get older, is the lack of daylight. I'm not an especially "hot weather" person or into very bright sun, and never have been, but I do like having daylight well into the evening, or even just during the bloody daytime. As you say, in December and early January, the sun sets around (or before!) 4PM and my tolerance for that has gone right down.
Dammit, I'm really sounding old and grumpy now. >:-(
Including this as much for my own reference, but I spoke to two people at work today; one was 32 (i.e. 5 or 6 years younger than me, probably guising in the late 80s/early 90s), the other was 21 (i.e. late 90s/early-00s). The 32-year-old shared my experience of turnip lanterns- the 21-year old did not, had a pumpkin and didn't relate to the turnip thing at all. So I'd say I was roughly correct when I pinpointed the 90s as when things changed- and within a relatively short period of time too, it seems.
Don't stereotype all of us south of the border in the same way. Hallowe'en seems pretty irrelevant where I live in west London.
I'm not sure why you're complaining about stereotyping- my comment was essentially that "until recently the English didn't really celebrate or care about Hallowe'en that much"... and your second sentence (and the rest of your comment) seems to back this up rather than contradicting it!
:-)
It's true that the "adults dressing up for Hallowe'en" thing seems to be more an American thing (or at least one would get that impression from watching US shows, which isn't always an accurate representation of reality). Even in 80s Scotland, adult involvement was mainly in making costumes for the kids and/or humouring their guising routines and giving them candy^w sweets or money.
Even nowadays, the more US-style Hallowe'en culture commercialised by UK businesses seems to be targeted mainly at children. It's still not really a big adult thing here, either in Scotland or England.
go back 10 years and hoards of people were paid to buy multiple copies of CDs and prior to that Vinyl
That's certainly true; it's been going on since the 60s, apparently. In the late-80s heavy metal spoof "More Bad News", they go into two shops and buy multiple copies of their own record.
However, bear in mind that if they were caught doing this (something that they supposedly cracked down on from the 80s onwards) they were likely to be banned from the charts- something that was also parodied in More Bad News when their manager tells them they've been banned because "some idiot apparently" went into a shop and bought loads of copies.
In fact, this post suggests that Spotify are doing pretty much that.