"Don't even think of using BT to transfer video data, it's severely bandwidth limited."
I was never talking about using BT as a way to transfer video. I was talking about using it as a method for other computers to control it. Right now I have a cell phone that talks to my laptop via BT. I thoguht that sounded gimmicky until I actually played with it. Now, I can set reminders etc so that my phone will remind me. Do I need to get up early on Saturday to catch a sale? No prob, plug it into Outlook and on Sat morning my cell phone's alarm goes off with a text description of why I need to wake up.
I didn't anticipate anything like that when I got the phone. It was a pleasant surprised. It really makes me feel that BT's has a lot of potential to be explored.
So yeah, I think there are uses we're not even thinking of that would make a BT interface on TV useful. Hell, I'd love the idea of my laptop talking to my TV. I could program a channel 'playlist'. "At 7, change to channel 12 so I can watch the Simpsons. At 7:30, change to 3 so I can watch Drew Carry, at 8 change to AMC because there's a movie I want to watch.." and so on.
"Nice troll. Could have been a bit smoother. 35" was overkill. Bluetooth - good one."
I don't know why you think he's trolling. He's got an interesting point. What would one do with a Bluetooth enabled TV?
I can imagine a PVR talking to a TV and vice versa. "Hey, I'm recording a show this guy likes. Turn to the channel I occupy!"
I can also imagine using a PDA or computer to talk to the PVR via Bluetooth to schedule recordings. Imagine going to TVguide.com, clicking a button to record, and Bluetooth does the rest.
I'm not aware of anything like this happening down the road, but the BT idea would be interesting. I know I like my laptop talking wirelessly to my phoine.
"I'm thinking there will be another Video Game crash. Too many systems, way too many games. Just like how Atari went down."
Nintendo is in a unique position to survive that. They have a loyal audience and an excellent track record. People know what to expect when a new Nintendo machine is on the horizon, but that's not necessarily true with the other consoles. People buy Nintendo consoles because they know Miymaoto's going to make lightning strike again, but there's little to keep people coming back to Sony every time they turn out a new machine.
Will I need to buy a Digital TV if they make it too hard for me to watch? Seriously, all this 'flags' crap makes me want to avoid it all together.
TV needs me, I don't need TV. Without my eyeballs on the commercials, they aren't making money. They should consider that before they try pushing restrictions I don't want.
Re:Dichotomy of story type splits Trek fans
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 2
"The dichotomy really is that TOS, TOS, and Voyager are all PLOT-driven. DS9 is CHARACTER-driven. This makes them appeal to completely different audiences, both of whom generally think that the other's guy's taste sucks."
Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to say! I'm glad you got modded up for it.:)
"Displayed quite prominently on a screen in "Star Trek: Nemisis", is the USS Archer... a ship presumably named after the first captain of the "Enterprise"... NX-01."
And that won't work because....?
Sorry, I see this as faulty logic. You're assuming that the NX-01 was named Enterprise. If it wasn't named Enterprise, that wouldn't have changed Archer being a captain. Then it wouldn't have shown up on the Enterprise's wall... etc.
"Not at all. I have a guitar synth myself, a Roland GR-50. It has a special pickup that you can attach to pretty much any steel-string guitar; it figures out what string and note is being play and uses that to control the synth and to generate MIDI events. "
That's pretty cool! Wish I had something more insightful to say than that, but I don't. It's starting to become clear that musicians have a broader toolset on the PC than most people are aware of.
Anybody else know of some cool input stuff like that? I've been looking for cheap ways to capture data like that (such as a music keyboard), I want to do a form of motion capture so I can animate stuff in Lightwave more naturally. It beats manually creating keyframes!
"Unless you can show us where the parent poster bashed MS for having bugs, don't post."
Um, no. What I said was a reflection of what I see on Slashdot, it has nothing to do with the parent poster.
"I see more posts on MS related threads saying something like the parent than I do MS bashing threads!"
Why do you think that is? Take a moment to ponder. Slashdot has filled people with so much bullshit about MS that even the anti-MS zealouts are sick of it. Sorry to say that it's not really cool to hate MS anymore. If this topic is any indication, we might finally be seeing the end of the Jerry Springer-esque MS fights around here.
Gee, I'm sorry my comment didn't suit your tastes, but the people who moderate these comments are regular posters just like you. Obviously they felt I was on to something.
"More impressive is the old wooden piano seems to survive better than the new synth but that is horse of a different colour."
I found this statement a little lacking in depth. The 'synth' isn't there to replace the piano specifically, it's there to provide a wide range of sounds. The keyboard interface is a very practical one for a classically trained musician to pick up and play. If it were here to replace the piano, it would have to not only faithfully recreate the sound, but it'd also have to provide the same feedback a piano does. When you play a piano, you can feel the hammers hitting the strings. This kind of feedback make it more natural to play. That's why it still has it's place.
Sorry for the rant, I just found the comparison a little silly. Kind of like comparing an alarm clock to the clock in Windows.
My comment about the 'keyboard interface that any musician can pick up' reminded me of something kind of interesting. Have any of you seen how the sound for the Simpsons is mastered? The sound guy has a guitar hooked up to a computer. He uses it to time when sounds take place. I thought that was a very unusual use for a guitar, but that's what he could play! I thought that was pretty cool.
...they're not bombarding me with messages like "Most Action Packed Movie of the Year!"
Re:It all went downhill when Gene died
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"....Deep Space Nine spun out of control..."
Careful. DS9 was probably the best series of all of them. It had a direction to go, it did so, and the fans were satisfied. Unfortunately, the people who didn't/couldn't keep up with it were the ones that were burned. So I can see why you say that about DS9.
"...and now Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later."
Have you paid any attention? I mean, you'd think that the fact that the NX-01 wasn't hanging on the wall in the Enterprise's ready room next to the space shuttle and aircraft carrier would be a big clue as to what's going on: The time line has been tampered with. One need not look any further than First Contact to see what happened. Cochrane named the NX-01 after the Enterprise, which he got a chance to see thanks to LaForge and a telescope.
Sadly, that revealed more of my geekiness than I'd typically allow on Slashdot. However, it bothers the shit out of me that I can see this, but the people I know that know which deck the only bathroom on the Enterprise is don't.
Let's get to the real crux of the consistency matter, though: Nobody could follow the timeline that TOS had laid out and then make it interesting to watch. The whole point of the TV show is to be new and interesting, it's no fun if it's all spoiled because Spock made an unimportant reference to meeting the Romulans.
Where's the fun in seeing things in the past if you can't see how familiar things have changed?
"Don't fall for that MS crap-trap. They might give you the source, but with a shit-load of draconian circumstances and catches that will make it unuseable.
Even if they do give India the source, it'll only be temporary -- for now, to prevent them from switching to Linux. Once India is dependant on MS, it'll be no more source and no more cheap-deals for them."
Babel Fish Translation, In English:
Blah blah blah M$. Blah blah blah evil. Blah blah blah? Monopoly! Blah blah blah only to screw you later blah blah blah. Don't trust blah blah blah blah. Microsoft blah blah crap and blah blah blah.
"3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge."
Better understanding of this point right here would probably reduce some of the negative stereotypes about Americans. The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have. We're not geographically ignorant, we have enough to know about the US before branching out into other countries. (I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City.)
I realize this is off topic, but/. comments are full of negative American Stereotypes. Anything that helps clarify details from different points of view will always alleviate this hostility.
"The Tubthumping statement points this out - apparently you feel entitled to some of the content off this horrid CD, but you do not feel obligated to pay for any of it (I certainly agree with that last part). You have a completely misplaced sense of entitlement which has developed through habit. If you did not download music illegally, you wouldn't feel like it's the RIAA's fault that you are forced to download music illegally."
You're putting the chicken before the egg. You're assuming that my use of P2P is causing me to rationalize not paying for music, really it's the other way around. The truth of the matter is, you don't know what you're paying for. By the time you find out what you're paying for, you cannot take it back if you're not satisfied with it. If you're curious about a CD, but don't have $15 to $20 to drop into finding out (college students, for example), you do not have options-a-plenty.
Why do you think people in the 56k days were willing to hang out on IRC and trade files at a whopping 15-60 minutes per song? It was *not* easier to get music than it was at the store, but the RIAA leaves you with little choice.
"Why not warez? Why do we have discussions like this about music, but not about warez?"
Glad you brought that up. The software industry has learned to accept that warez will always happen. They don't go to ridiculous extremes like the RIAA is to try to thwart it, instead they figured out WHY people trade warez and addressed those issues. I can go download game demos and play them on my computer. The game demos are strong enough to make me say "yes! I'll buy it!" or "no, this stinks", or "damn, this doesn't work on my computer. Seeing as how games cost up to 5x what music CD's cost, you'd think P2P would be really high on the regulation radar. Nope. Not necessary. But the RIAA assumes everybody is a thief, and is trying to take uber-extreme actions to force feed people their business model. They don't realize that a little bit of focus on customer satisfaction is all they really need.
"I'm aware few on/. is going to take me seriously..."
What do you expect? Times are changing. Today's technology allows us to put all of our favorite music into one little device for random-access play. We can go find individual songs we like on impulse and go get them, no more searching through albums! It won't be long before we all have PDAs with all of our music and personal data on them. There is a huge growth potential for the RIAA here and they're trying to stifle it! It's not about free music, it's about making music even more accessible to listen to.
Hopefully now you'll understand why you get such a negative response here. Turning this into a "you just dont want to pay for it" debate is insulting because it's such a petty accusation. It's not even close to the heart of the matter, and it shows you're entirely missing the point. I'm sure lots of people would second me if I said "thank you for branding me a thief when really what I want is make music a bigger part of my life."
" Don't listen to Tubthumping, you brave soul, you. (you know, that is one way to avoid paying $15 for it...)"
Err okay. The point here is to work WITH the RIAA for them to provide their music in modern formats, not drive them out of business so they don't make music anymore. Seriously, that's an oversimplified petty solution to the problem. The reason the RIAA isn't making money from P2P is entirely their fault. If they can't work with the change in times, then it's time to make room for an organzation that will.
"I don't like used car salesmen. They are greedy, evil, and not to be trusted. I still don't go on the lot and test-drive their cars for months without their knowledge (even if that will make me more likely to buy it in the future)."
Okay, you know what? I think it's time to put stale arguments like these to rest, permanently.
The fundamental flaw in this type of argument is that the 'stealing' of the content doesn't actually cause a measurable loss to the provider. If I take that salesman's car and test drive it for months, he can't sell it to a legit customer. That is 100% untrue with what's happening with P2P and MP3s. A copy of a song does not actually cost the RIAA any money. It doesn't even mean that they didn't get money they should. It has no relation whatsoever to losses or gains by the RIAA.
At worst, the RIAA got their foot in the door to somebody's house. If that person doesn't buy the song he listens to, that is a failure on the RIAA's part, not on the potential customer's. Part of the problem is that the RIAA won't let you buy songs individually. Sorry, I'm not paying $15 for Tubthumping.
So, your argument here is totally invalid. If you want to argue against the good P2P has done for the RIAA, then I suggest you stop using references to the physical world. Trust me when I say that nobody you're arguing with is going to take you very seriously if you don't demonstrate that you understand the difference between copying data and physical loss.
"Well, Moby's 18 was lame, thanks to MP3 sharing, I could just avoid this expense. (I erased all since)."
I think that's what the RIAA is afraid of. Thanks to Mp3s, they have to treat their customers.. *GASP* FAIRLY!
It bugs the hell out of me that once I open a CD, I own it. That's it. I can't return it under the typical 'satisfaction guaranteed' policy that most other products enjoy.
By the RIAA's way, I have to make a purchasing decision from hearing 1-2 songs on an album I caught on the radio. In other words, I have no way of knowing (unless I want to invest way too much time into research...) if the CD has $15-$20 worth of interesting content on it.
P2P and MP3s really level the playing field. Now the RIAA has to treat me nice instead of fending me off with a stick. Too bad they're still trying the stick approach.
"Then again, if Apple came out with one I'm sure reviewers would be falling all over themselves to praise it..."
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean people would scramble to buy one. To tell you the truth, I think it'd be a big flop for Apple. People tend to buy stuff like PCs based on their potential, not based on what they can do today. Lots of PC users see Apple as cool, but they'd be missing a lot. Imagine trading in your camera for a B&W camera with twice the pixels. You'd sit there wondering if the loss in color would bite you later even though the extra pixels do exactly what you need it to.
"Does anyone else out there have the same feeling I do, that the Tablet PC is over hyped? The only tangible benefit I can really see is totally comfort motivated."
Hey now, Geordi LaForge maintained the starship Enterprise with these things. Overhyped indeed!
Slashdot Mirror
"Don't even think of using BT to transfer video data, it's severely bandwidth limited."
I was never talking about using BT as a way to transfer video. I was talking about using it as a method for other computers to control it. Right now I have a cell phone that talks to my laptop via BT. I thoguht that sounded gimmicky until I actually played with it. Now, I can set reminders etc so that my phone will remind me. Do I need to get up early on Saturday to catch a sale? No prob, plug it into Outlook and on Sat morning my cell phone's alarm goes off with a text description of why I need to wake up.
I didn't anticipate anything like that when I got the phone. It was a pleasant surprised. It really makes me feel that BT's has a lot of potential to be explored.
So yeah, I think there are uses we're not even thinking of that would make a BT interface on TV useful. Hell, I'd love the idea of my laptop talking to my TV. I could program a channel 'playlist'. "At 7, change to channel 12 so I can watch the Simpsons. At 7:30, change to 3 so I can watch Drew Carry, at 8 change to AMC because there's a movie I want to watch.." and so on.
Anyway, that's what I was thinking.
"Nice troll. Could have been a bit smoother. 35" was overkill. Bluetooth - good one."
I don't know why you think he's trolling. He's got an interesting point. What would one do with a Bluetooth enabled TV?
I can imagine a PVR talking to a TV and vice versa. "Hey, I'm recording a show this guy likes. Turn to the channel I occupy!"
I can also imagine using a PDA or computer to talk to the PVR via Bluetooth to schedule recordings. Imagine going to TVguide.com, clicking a button to record, and Bluetooth does the rest.
I'm not aware of anything like this happening down the road, but the BT idea would be interesting. I know I like my laptop talking wirelessly to my phoine.
"I'm thinking there will be another Video Game crash. Too many systems, way too many games. Just like how Atari went down."
Nintendo is in a unique position to survive that. They have a loyal audience and an excellent track record. People know what to expect when a new Nintendo machine is on the horizon, but that's not necessarily true with the other consoles. People buy Nintendo consoles because they know Miymaoto's going to make lightning strike again, but there's little to keep people coming back to Sony every time they turn out a new machine.
"Will We Need A SmartCard to Watch Digital TV?"
Will I need to buy a Digital TV if they make it too hard for me to watch? Seriously, all this 'flags' crap makes me want to avoid it all together.
TV needs me, I don't need TV. Without my eyeballs on the commercials, they aren't making money. They should consider that before they try pushing restrictions I don't want.
"The dichotomy really is that TOS, TOS, and Voyager are all PLOT-driven. DS9 is CHARACTER-driven. This makes them appeal to completely different audiences, both of whom generally think that the other's guy's taste sucks."
:)
Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to say! I'm glad you got modded up for it.
"Displayed quite prominently on a screen in "Star Trek: Nemisis", is the USS Archer... a ship presumably named after the first captain of the "Enterprise"... NX-01."
And that won't work because....?
Sorry, I see this as faulty logic. You're assuming that the NX-01 was named Enterprise. If it wasn't named Enterprise, that wouldn't have changed Archer being a captain. Then it wouldn't have shown up on the Enterprise's wall... etc.
"Thank you. You've rekindled my interest in this series. Hopefully I'll be able to find and watch it in order some day."
:)
I think Paramount recently announced DS9 would be availbe by season on DVD starting in Feb.
"Not at all. I have a guitar synth myself, a Roland GR-50. It has a special pickup that you can attach to pretty much any steel-string guitar; it figures out what string and note is being play and uses that to control the synth and to generate MIDI events. "
That's pretty cool! Wish I had something more insightful to say than that, but I don't. It's starting to become clear that musicians have a broader toolset on the PC than most people are aware of.
Anybody else know of some cool input stuff like that? I've been looking for cheap ways to capture data like that (such as a music keyboard), I want to do a form of motion capture so I can animate stuff in Lightwave more naturally. It beats manually creating keyframes!
"Unless you can show us where the parent poster bashed MS for having bugs, don't post."
Um, no. What I said was a reflection of what I see on Slashdot, it has nothing to do with the parent poster.
"I see more posts on MS related threads saying something like the parent than I do MS bashing threads!"
Why do you think that is? Take a moment to ponder. Slashdot has filled people with so much bullshit about MS that even the anti-MS zealouts are sick of it. Sorry to say that it's not really cool to hate MS anymore. If this topic is any indication, we might finally be seeing the end of the Jerry Springer-esque MS fights around here.
Gee, I'm sorry my comment didn't suit your tastes, but the people who moderate these comments are regular posters just like you. Obviously they felt I was on to something.
"More impressive is the old wooden piano seems to survive better than the new synth but that is horse of a different colour."
I found this statement a little lacking in depth. The 'synth' isn't there to replace the piano specifically, it's there to provide a wide range of sounds. The keyboard interface is a very practical one for a classically trained musician to pick up and play. If it were here to replace the piano, it would have to not only faithfully recreate the sound, but it'd also have to provide the same feedback a piano does. When you play a piano, you can feel the hammers hitting the strings. This kind of feedback make it more natural to play. That's why it still has it's place.
Sorry for the rant, I just found the comparison a little silly. Kind of like comparing an alarm clock to the clock in Windows.
My comment about the 'keyboard interface that any musician can pick up' reminded me of something kind of interesting. Have any of you seen how the sound for the Simpsons is mastered? The sound guy has a guitar hooked up to a computer. He uses it to time when sounds take place. I thought that was a very unusual use for a guitar, but that's what he could play! I thought that was pretty cool.
"Which alternate universe are you from, again?"
That's your whole debate?
Yes, ST III was good. It was very good. It also played a crucial role in the 3-part story arc.
It certainly did well enough in theaters that ST IV's arrival was guaranteed.
...they're not bombarding me with messages like "Most Action Packed Movie of the Year!"
"....Deep Space Nine spun out of control..."
Careful. DS9 was probably the best series of all of them. It had a direction to go, it did so, and the fans were satisfied. Unfortunately, the people who didn't/couldn't keep up with it were the ones that were burned. So I can see why you say that about DS9.
"...and now Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later."
Have you paid any attention? I mean, you'd think that the fact that the NX-01 wasn't hanging on the wall in the Enterprise's ready room next to the space shuttle and aircraft carrier would be a big clue as to what's going on: The time line has been tampered with. One need not look any further than First Contact to see what happened. Cochrane named the NX-01 after the Enterprise, which he got a chance to see thanks to LaForge and a telescope.
Sadly, that revealed more of my geekiness than I'd typically allow on Slashdot. However, it bothers the shit out of me that I can see this, but the people I know that know which deck the only bathroom on the Enterprise is don't.
Let's get to the real crux of the consistency matter, though: Nobody could follow the timeline that TOS had laid out and then make it interesting to watch. The whole point of the TV show is to be new and interesting, it's no fun if it's all spoiled because Spock made an unimportant reference to meeting the Romulans.
Where's the fun in seeing things in the past if you can't see how familiar things have changed?
"Bugs happen every day.
Patches are generated in response to those bugs
Patches sometimes generate further bugs
Sometimes these bugs involve security. D'oh"
Too bad every time MS does it, Slashdot has a 'everybody who uses MS is stupid!' field day.
Even if they do give India the source, it'll only be temporary -- for now, to prevent them from switching to Linux. Once India is dependant on MS, it'll be no more source and no more cheap-deals for them."
Babel Fish Translation, In English:
"3.The US is not in proximity with other countries so we do not have the necessity or luck of having to learn another langauge. Europe you guys are all bordered next to each other, short hops in between, easy to travel. Easy to learn another langauge."
/. comments are full of negative American Stereotypes. Anything that helps clarify details from different points of view will always alleviate this hostility.
Better understanding of this point right here would probably reduce some of the negative stereotypes about Americans. The US is HUGE. We're not self centered, we're overloaded with what we have. We're not geographically ignorant, we have enough to know about the US before branching out into other countries. (I couldn't point to Afghanistan on a map any more than a German could point to Kansas City.)
I realize this is off topic, but
"6 hours? The minute this was announced, the source showed up in sidewalk kiosks in China."
Actually it was Linux with a Windows logo set as the wallpaper.
"The Tubthumping statement points this out - apparently you feel entitled to some of the content off this horrid CD, but you do not feel obligated to pay for any of it (I certainly agree with that last part). You have a completely misplaced sense of entitlement which has developed through habit. If you did not download music illegally, you wouldn't feel like it's the RIAA's fault that you are forced to download music illegally."
/. is going to take me seriously..."
You're putting the chicken before the egg. You're assuming that my use of P2P is causing me to rationalize not paying for music, really it's the other way around. The truth of the matter is, you don't know what you're paying for. By the time you find out what you're paying for, you cannot take it back if you're not satisfied with it. If you're curious about a CD, but don't have $15 to $20 to drop into finding out (college students, for example), you do not have options-a-plenty.
Why do you think people in the 56k days were willing to hang out on IRC and trade files at a whopping 15-60 minutes per song? It was *not* easier to get music than it was at the store, but the RIAA leaves you with little choice.
"Why not warez? Why do we have discussions like this about music, but not about warez?"
Glad you brought that up. The software industry has learned to accept that warez will always happen. They don't go to ridiculous extremes like the RIAA is to try to thwart it, instead they figured out WHY people trade warez and addressed those issues. I can go download game demos and play them on my computer. The game demos are strong enough to make me say "yes! I'll buy it!" or "no, this stinks", or "damn, this doesn't work on my computer. Seeing as how games cost up to 5x what music CD's cost, you'd think P2P would be really high on the regulation radar. Nope. Not necessary. But the RIAA assumes everybody is a thief, and is trying to take uber-extreme actions to force feed people their business model. They don't realize that a little bit of focus on customer satisfaction is all they really need.
"I'm aware few on
What do you expect? Times are changing. Today's technology allows us to put all of our favorite music into one little device for random-access play. We can go find individual songs we like on impulse and go get them, no more searching through albums! It won't be long before we all have PDAs with all of our music and personal data on them. There is a huge growth potential for the RIAA here and they're trying to stifle it! It's not about free music, it's about making music even more accessible to listen to.
Hopefully now you'll understand why you get such a negative response here. Turning this into a "you just dont want to pay for it" debate is insulting because it's such a petty accusation. It's not even close to the heart of the matter, and it shows you're entirely missing the point. I'm sure lots of people would second me if I said "thank you for branding me a thief when really what I want is make music a bigger part of my life."
" Don't listen to Tubthumping, you brave soul, you. (you know, that is one way to avoid paying $15 for it...)"
Err okay. The point here is to work WITH the RIAA for them to provide their music in modern formats, not drive them out of business so they don't make music anymore. Seriously, that's an oversimplified petty solution to the problem. The reason the RIAA isn't making money from P2P is entirely their fault. If they can't work with the change in times, then it's time to make room for an organzation that will.
"Save your money and buy the Wacom integrated display/drawing tablet and plug it into your current machine."
You mean the $3,600 device that must remain tethered to my computer?
"I don't like used car salesmen. They are greedy, evil, and not to be trusted. I still don't go on the lot and test-drive their cars for months without their knowledge (even if that will make me more likely to buy it in the future)."
Okay, you know what? I think it's time to put stale arguments like these to rest, permanently.
The fundamental flaw in this type of argument is that the 'stealing' of the content doesn't actually cause a measurable loss to the provider. If I take that salesman's car and test drive it for months, he can't sell it to a legit customer. That is 100% untrue with what's happening with P2P and MP3s. A copy of a song does not actually cost the RIAA any money. It doesn't even mean that they didn't get money they should. It has no relation whatsoever to losses or gains by the RIAA.
At worst, the RIAA got their foot in the door to somebody's house. If that person doesn't buy the song he listens to, that is a failure on the RIAA's part, not on the potential customer's. Part of the problem is that the RIAA won't let you buy songs individually. Sorry, I'm not paying $15 for Tubthumping.
So, your argument here is totally invalid. If you want to argue against the good P2P has done for the RIAA, then I suggest you stop using references to the physical world. Trust me when I say that nobody you're arguing with is going to take you very seriously if you don't demonstrate that you understand the difference between copying data and physical loss.
"Well, Moby's 18 was lame, thanks to MP3 sharing, I could just avoid this expense. (I erased all since)."
I think that's what the RIAA is afraid of. Thanks to Mp3s, they have to treat their customers.. *GASP* FAIRLY!
It bugs the hell out of me that once I open a CD, I own it. That's it. I can't return it under the typical 'satisfaction guaranteed' policy that most other products enjoy.
By the RIAA's way, I have to make a purchasing decision from hearing 1-2 songs on an album I caught on the radio. In other words, I have no way of knowing (unless I want to invest way too much time into research...) if the CD has $15-$20 worth of interesting content on it.
P2P and MP3s really level the playing field. Now the RIAA has to treat me nice instead of fending me off with a stick. Too bad they're still trying the stick approach.
"Then again, if Apple came out with one I'm sure reviewers would be falling all over themselves to praise it..."
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean people would scramble to buy one. To tell you the truth, I think it'd be a big flop for Apple. People tend to buy stuff like PCs based on their potential, not based on what they can do today. Lots of PC users see Apple as cool, but they'd be missing a lot. Imagine trading in your camera for a B&W camera with twice the pixels. You'd sit there wondering if the loss in color would bite you later even though the extra pixels do exactly what you need it to.
Something like this *must* run Windows.
"Does anyone else out there have the same feeling I do, that the Tablet PC is over hyped? The only tangible benefit I can really see is totally comfort motivated."
Hey now, Geordi LaForge maintained the starship Enterprise with these things. Overhyped indeed!
"Many of the (including myself) actually see things like Tablet PCs have a productivity advantage over a laptop."
I know a LOT of people out in the art world just *aching* to try Photoshop on one of these.
Heh. Well I have no idea. I think somebody modded the entire thread down 3 times. That bugs the hell out of me.
:)
Thanks for the kind words.