Sad to see you having such problems. I have a Verizon Samsung i760 and it works flawlessly. Maybe you're jumping the gun by putting down an entire manufacturer over one model?
If I dismissed any company that ever put out a bad product I would own nothing today. I certainly wouldn't own a Motorola. As much as I loved my StarTak nearly everything I've ever seen from them since in the clam-shell form factor seems average or below average.
I really think the touchscreen computer is going to be a big fail as long as the ergonomics of computers remain the same as they are today. Holding your hand up to a monitor for any real length of time is tiring and painful (and probably unhealthy after doing it for extended periods of time). Touch screen will work nicely for tablet form factor PCs but aside from that workspaces will have to be re-engineered to make them acceptable to the masses. I really don't think that early versions are going to be adopted well.
It's disappointing that I can't find one. I know someone who loves the game but I'm a bit offset by the number of people who put in a couple of hours and dished it off as old hat. Maybe that's a good reason not to have a demo but still...
Re:If EA is reading this
on
Review: Spore
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· Score: 1
That is the only way I can think of to teach you that you can't try to control my computer.
How about boycotting the game and perhaps all of EA for that matter and actually writing to them and let them know in no uncertain terms? I think that would be more effective.
While EA may have someone reading this, let's be honest, announcements like this are done for the benefit of the heard, not EA. While it may make others cheer you on and follow your lead it's not that effective of a tool of protest against EA.
I have a problem with Amazon letting people rate/review any product that they haven't bought from Amazon anyway. There's already way too much astroturf in the world. Amazon doubtlessly knows that this is going on and are hopefully doing away with a hotbed for fanbois and naysayers alike.
So go ahead, pay 50 bucks to get on your soap box about DRM. But give the game a chance to stand on it's own merits instead of letting people go wild about not liking a product that they've never touched.
You don't think that interested parties keep track of what's going on at the torrent sites? Granted, they may or may not be able to come up with a real number but if they can show their buddies in congress that it's one of the most active torrents going for any significant period of time they can easily make the case that "we would have had sales if they didn't have downloads."
I know someone is going to yammer on about how "people would have never have bought it, yadda yadda yadda" and that not everyone who downloaded it would have bought it, and this may very well be true but at least some of the torrent base was potential customers. The logic of "teh d0wnlo^d != l0st sales!!!onehundredeleven!!" doesn't go over well in the real world.
For my part I think of film buffs and music fans as being knowledgeable about their respective arts. Having a great HD TV and all the associated trash doesn't mean much to me (as a fan) if you don't know Kubrick from Lucas just like having a great stereo doesn't seem to mean much if you can't tell Steely Dan from Slayer.
People don't need the best to be fans. Who's the bigger fan, the guy with hardback first editions of every Stephen King book who's never read them or the guy who has every paperback with hardly any covers or spines left due to reading them over and over again?
The value of a collection and it's playback hardware is not inherently equal to the enthusiasm of the fan.
Continue to think what you will. It's obvious that I've answered the question and you keep cawing back with the same answer. This is the same answer as the Linux Revolution has been going on about for over 10 years and I guess you will continue to do so.
If it really was about being frugal than Apple's slice of the pie would be dwindling.
Again, think what you will. I've heard this all numbers times before and it's not done much of anything to change the market. Linux does get media attention. Many more people know about Linux than you think and few are to adopt. Most people don't squabble about it because they don't feel that it doesn't deserve their attention for whatever number of reasons. In the end the Linux marketshare chance of massively changing before we move out of this current phase of computing seems to get smaller as time marches on. You may be right and in another 10 years Linux may be as common as Windows is today but not with the current tactics. So, if you're right you can sit back and laugh at me all you want when it happens and feel vindicated. Believe me, I won't be losing any sleep over it.
Oh, and if you don't think that there isn't a geek aura that surrounds Linux making it one of the many reasons some geeks go with Linux you're freaking out of your mind. Many of the novice geeks I know go on and on about Linux with little or no use of it and fewer contribute to the community. Heck, my 16 year old nephew is constantly going on about how he is going to set up a Linux machine... I bet you dimes to dollars if you handed him a Tux t-shirt he'd wear it just to come off in geek fashion.
Personally, I let all of that kind of thing go when I woke up from being an Amiga fanboi and hearing all the same ranting and raving. IMHO I'm better off for it too. And that's not to say that I don't think the Amiga was a great idea and really did rise above the competition but I know enough now to know that being technically correct about something doesn't mean the market is going to budge.
but since when is someone wrong just because they are emotional?
Who said anything about being emotional?
I don't see any logic from you supporting Windows on HP's devices when Linux has the software to do most anything they'd want.
The logic is in black and white in sales figures. Linux may have it's place when those number rise but unless the bulk of their customer base is beating down their door for Linux PCs there is no justification for offering every machine in every configuration with Linux. It's that simple. If you're looking for a technical justification you may or may not find one but that doesn't mean jack when the people paying your bills say otherwise. HP will happily pay the "Microsoft tax" as long as it keeps machines flowing out of their warehouses and so far it seems like it's a business model that is working fine for them.
What I was pointing out and what you didn't see to catch on to is that most people don't have a problem with running Windows. Bill Gates isn't their enemy, open standards don't mean anything to them and most consumers would be happy to pay a little extra for the devil they know. Given the OEM discount rate it probably costs more to ship a new system than what the cost of a Windows home license is.
So there you have the logic: the consumers want it and the manufactures still profit from it. Don't forget that HP pays a lot of cash in other areas too but you don't see them building their own hard drives and processors. Could they do it and save themselves the overhead charged by companies like Western Digital or Intel? Probably but it's not worth it in the long run or they'd be doing it.
Again, who's making billions and who's bickering on Slashdot? That answer alone trumps any logic you can come up with. When there is a demand a supply will appear. Much like the demand for fuel efficient vehicles is pushing the auto industry today. If gas ever comes back down to 1.25 a gallon do you really think that this would last? If you need a bit of background just go check out the trends in auto design from 1970 to 1990. The market will bear what is demanded of it, not what makes the most sense.
It'd be nice to see a breaking point where companies started to finally say "ummmmmm yeeeeeeeeah great MS, uh huh...hmm...yeah...*hiding Tux behind their backs*...OK EVERYBODY SUPPORT LINUX WOOHOO!" Of course, in reality there probably won't be one and instead MS will just sell less and less licenses.
Ah yes, this mystical point where everyone will dance in the streets and Tux will be the new mascot of computing. I've been hearing this mantra for over 10 years now and it still hasn't come to pass. Everytime Microsoft does the most minor of screw ups someone is on here ranting about how Microsoft just nailed the lid to their own coffin. Ok... have a blast thinking that way. And even if they do there is no evidence out there to make me think that Linux would fill that void. Apple has out run Linux in marketshare at such a frightening pace that it's gotten even harder for me to take Linux as seriously as I did even a few years ago.
Just like how Timothy Leary thought that this same kind of revolution would happen with Marijuana. That some fine day everyone would "turn on" and see the logic of legalized pot. Here it is some 40 years later, Leary is dead, pot is still taboo and the same people who were telling us that turning on was the way to a better life in the 60s are the ones who are pressing for harsher drug sentences all the time. Does that mean that Leary was wrong? Not really, but his vision was more powerful than his magic cure-all.
These and other fantasies of mass consciousness revolution... film at 11...
You may not have recognized your own weaving-in of meaning, but it comes across quite clearly if one reads just right: You want out. You want to escape the world of Windows to which Microsoft has sequestered you for the better part of two decades. Ah, but you can. No longer does Bill Gates stand guard outside your cell...
What in the world makes you think that HP so desperately wants to break from MS? This is an enormous assumption. This is the assumption that just about every "year of Linux" article on Slashdot depends on and the blaring truth is that most people don't want to see MS fail. Most people don't see Gates as the evil borg. Most people don't give a damn about the bullshit OS wars. There are an extremely small number of people who have this anti-Microsoft hard on and even fewer who would be willing to buy a product just because Linux is stamped on it. HP knows this. There's a good reason they're making billions as we sit, blog and bicker about technology.
And I have a hard time taking someone seriously who acts like Bill Gates is the reason that companies offered up Windows or stayed loyal to MS. What kind of oddball reasoning could make someone make that jump in logic?
You know, there are plenty of really good blogs out there but if we're going to continue to see more and more blog posts represented as legitimate news articles can we please flag them in some way so I can just chose to ignore them?
It would be a great read if I was one of the ten people on the face of the planet who could actually understand every detail. Oh, sorry, that's the people who wrote it.
I know it's going to get downloaded a ton of times and probably deleted before most readers ever get to the 3rd page, if it's even read at all.
Save them poor guys some bandwidth, torrent it. Too many people are going to be wasting their resources with no serious intentions of reading the contents.
It's looking to displace Microsoft with hosted services like Google Apps, Gmail and Google Docs.
You know, I hate to tell people this but most people really don't have a hard-on to see MS die. For the most part, in the professional world, people are going to use what works best in their environment regardless of branding or cost (within reasonable limits of course). It's pretty poor when you support "the other guy" because you hate someone else so much that you simply can not stand to see them succeed. In real life when you put that attitude into action you'll find that you waste a lot of good time and money on trying to sink the other guys ship when you could have done it by improving yourself and not only defeat them but also come off with a better product. What's the saying? There's no revenge as sweet as success? Spending resources to beat on someone else is counter productive and, frankly, petty.
The way you stated your numbers could have (and was) very easy to misconstrue. And I don't really think there is anyone out there who is representing the upswing in vinyl sales as a threat to CDs dominance in the market. So if it makes you happy, yes, vinyl numbers will remain small in the future. I don't think anyone here has questioned that. But from what you're saying it would be like saying that Linux on the desktop is dead. Or that Bentley cars are dead.
And in any case, your point about the gold/platinum album is just as moot considering that certification is based on the work and not the format. So even if these numbers are small they do contribute to the overall sales of a work.
The thing is that you can't have "the same thing" as an iPod 160gb for 5 dollars. That's roughly what it works out to in the minds of the people who see the 600 dollar headphones compared to the 10 dollar ear buds.
Well, the first all digital recording for the mass market was Dire Strait's Brothers In Arms album and it was considered really advanced in it's own time. So, it's more likely that you'd be pretty safe with most recordings up to the early 90s. Some of this would also be determined by genre since I know that a lot of classical was a big early adopter of digital but your punk and garage band types may still be using older technology today.
And I know that some artists went back to analog recording because of the sound dynamics.
It use to be the most CDs came with the SPARS code on them (AAD, ADD, DDD, DAD) but this seems to have fallen by the wayside. It would be really interesting to see who still uses what technology today. Also consider that many may be using sample rates far over those of conventional CDs so the vinyl may still offer better dynamics in that fashion.
I guess the public at large just does not care about audio fidelity, or an immersive music experience.
The public at large cannot and will not pay for the immersive audio music experience and even less of them have hearing capable of enjoying it.
Let's be honest, for most people the 10 USD ear buds is more than enough in their opinion. Tell them you own a 600 USD set of Sennheisers and you'd swear that you just told them you just paid 600 USD for a candy bar.
Quality playback equipment is expensive. Most people can't justify 99 cents for a song, how do you think they can justify a few hundred to a few thousand for playback equipment?
Slashdot Mirror
Sad to see you having such problems. I have a Verizon Samsung i760 and it works flawlessly. Maybe you're jumping the gun by putting down an entire manufacturer over one model?
If I dismissed any company that ever put out a bad product I would own nothing today. I certainly wouldn't own a Motorola. As much as I loved my StarTak nearly everything I've ever seen from them since in the clam-shell form factor seems average or below average.
I really think the touchscreen computer is going to be a big fail as long as the ergonomics of computers remain the same as they are today. Holding your hand up to a monitor for any real length of time is tiring and painful (and probably unhealthy after doing it for extended periods of time). Touch screen will work nicely for tablet form factor PCs but aside from that workspaces will have to be re-engineered to make them acceptable to the masses. I really don't think that early versions are going to be adopted well.
It's disappointing that I can't find one. I know someone who loves the game but I'm a bit offset by the number of people who put in a couple of hours and dished it off as old hat. Maybe that's a good reason not to have a demo but still...
That is the only way I can think of to teach you that you can't try to control my computer.
How about boycotting the game and perhaps all of EA for that matter and actually writing to them and let them know in no uncertain terms? I think that would be more effective.
While EA may have someone reading this, let's be honest, announcements like this are done for the benefit of the heard, not EA. While it may make others cheer you on and follow your lead it's not that effective of a tool of protest against EA.
Whatever. Face facts, you were wrong and I was right. It's that simple.
Oh, she does... just not with you.
nudge nudge, wink wink.
I didn't offer any solution. I just said how the current situation is interpreted.
I have a problem with Amazon letting people rate/review any product that they haven't bought from Amazon anyway. There's already way too much astroturf in the world. Amazon doubtlessly knows that this is going on and are hopefully doing away with a hotbed for fanbois and naysayers alike.
So go ahead, pay 50 bucks to get on your soap box about DRM. But give the game a chance to stand on it's own merits instead of letting people go wild about not liking a product that they've never touched.
You don't think that interested parties keep track of what's going on at the torrent sites? Granted, they may or may not be able to come up with a real number but if they can show their buddies in congress that it's one of the most active torrents going for any significant period of time they can easily make the case that "we would have had sales if they didn't have downloads."
I know someone is going to yammer on about how "people would have never have bought it, yadda yadda yadda" and that not everyone who downloaded it would have bought it, and this may very well be true but at least some of the torrent base was potential customers. The logic of "teh d0wnlo^d != l0st sales!!!onehundredeleven!!" doesn't go over well in the real world.
Are we suppose to be outraged or amused? I really don't see the point in this story aside from maybe a cautionary tale.
Slow news day, I guess.
Actually, it's going to turn into a white dwarf in most likeliness.
But I understand where you're coming from.
I'd walk a mile to code in Caml.
For my part I think of film buffs and music fans as being knowledgeable about their respective arts. Having a great HD TV and all the associated trash doesn't mean much to me (as a fan) if you don't know Kubrick from Lucas just like having a great stereo doesn't seem to mean much if you can't tell Steely Dan from Slayer.
People don't need the best to be fans. Who's the bigger fan, the guy with hardback first editions of every Stephen King book who's never read them or the guy who has every paperback with hardly any covers or spines left due to reading them over and over again?
The value of a collection and it's playback hardware is not inherently equal to the enthusiasm of the fan.
Continue to think what you will. It's obvious that I've answered the question and you keep cawing back with the same answer. This is the same answer as the Linux Revolution has been going on about for over 10 years and I guess you will continue to do so.
If it really was about being frugal than Apple's slice of the pie would be dwindling.
Again, think what you will. I've heard this all numbers times before and it's not done much of anything to change the market. Linux does get media attention. Many more people know about Linux than you think and few are to adopt. Most people don't squabble about it because they don't feel that it doesn't deserve their attention for whatever number of reasons. In the end the Linux marketshare chance of massively changing before we move out of this current phase of computing seems to get smaller as time marches on. You may be right and in another 10 years Linux may be as common as Windows is today but not with the current tactics. So, if you're right you can sit back and laugh at me all you want when it happens and feel vindicated. Believe me, I won't be losing any sleep over it.
Oh, and if you don't think that there isn't a geek aura that surrounds Linux making it one of the many reasons some geeks go with Linux you're freaking out of your mind. Many of the novice geeks I know go on and on about Linux with little or no use of it and fewer contribute to the community. Heck, my 16 year old nephew is constantly going on about how he is going to set up a Linux machine... I bet you dimes to dollars if you handed him a Tux t-shirt he'd wear it just to come off in geek fashion.
Personally, I let all of that kind of thing go when I woke up from being an Amiga fanboi and hearing all the same ranting and raving. IMHO I'm better off for it too. And that's not to say that I don't think the Amiga was a great idea and really did rise above the competition but I know enough now to know that being technically correct about something doesn't mean the market is going to budge.
but since when is someone wrong just because they are emotional?
Who said anything about being emotional?
I don't see any logic from you supporting Windows on HP's devices when Linux has the software to do most anything they'd want.
The logic is in black and white in sales figures. Linux may have it's place when those number rise but unless the bulk of their customer base is beating down their door for Linux PCs there is no justification for offering every machine in every configuration with Linux. It's that simple. If you're looking for a technical justification you may or may not find one but that doesn't mean jack when the people paying your bills say otherwise. HP will happily pay the "Microsoft tax" as long as it keeps machines flowing out of their warehouses and so far it seems like it's a business model that is working fine for them.
What I was pointing out and what you didn't see to catch on to is that most people don't have a problem with running Windows. Bill Gates isn't their enemy, open standards don't mean anything to them and most consumers would be happy to pay a little extra for the devil they know. Given the OEM discount rate it probably costs more to ship a new system than what the cost of a Windows home license is.
So there you have the logic: the consumers want it and the manufactures still profit from it. Don't forget that HP pays a lot of cash in other areas too but you don't see them building their own hard drives and processors. Could they do it and save themselves the overhead charged by companies like Western Digital or Intel? Probably but it's not worth it in the long run or they'd be doing it.
Again, who's making billions and who's bickering on Slashdot? That answer alone trumps any logic you can come up with. When there is a demand a supply will appear. Much like the demand for fuel efficient vehicles is pushing the auto industry today. If gas ever comes back down to 1.25 a gallon do you really think that this would last? If you need a bit of background just go check out the trends in auto design from 1970 to 1990. The market will bear what is demanded of it, not what makes the most sense.
It'd be nice to see a breaking point where companies started to finally say "ummmmmm yeeeeeeeeah great MS, uh huh...hmm...yeah...*hiding Tux behind their backs*...OK EVERYBODY SUPPORT LINUX WOOHOO!" Of course, in reality there probably won't be one and instead MS will just sell less and less licenses.
Ah yes, this mystical point where everyone will dance in the streets and Tux will be the new mascot of computing. I've been hearing this mantra for over 10 years now and it still hasn't come to pass. Everytime Microsoft does the most minor of screw ups someone is on here ranting about how Microsoft just nailed the lid to their own coffin. Ok... have a blast thinking that way. And even if they do there is no evidence out there to make me think that Linux would fill that void. Apple has out run Linux in marketshare at such a frightening pace that it's gotten even harder for me to take Linux as seriously as I did even a few years ago.
Just like how Timothy Leary thought that this same kind of revolution would happen with Marijuana. That some fine day everyone would "turn on" and see the logic of legalized pot. Here it is some 40 years later, Leary is dead, pot is still taboo and the same people who were telling us that turning on was the way to a better life in the 60s are the ones who are pressing for harsher drug sentences all the time. Does that mean that Leary was wrong? Not really, but his vision was more powerful than his magic cure-all.
These and other fantasies of mass consciousness revolution... film at 11...
You may not have recognized your own weaving-in of meaning, but it comes across quite clearly if one reads just right: You want out. You want to escape the world of Windows to which Microsoft has sequestered you for the better part of two decades. Ah, but you can. No longer does Bill Gates stand guard outside your cell...
What in the world makes you think that HP so desperately wants to break from MS? This is an enormous assumption. This is the assumption that just about every "year of Linux" article on Slashdot depends on and the blaring truth is that most people don't want to see MS fail. Most people don't see Gates as the evil borg. Most people don't give a damn about the bullshit OS wars. There are an extremely small number of people who have this anti-Microsoft hard on and even fewer who would be willing to buy a product just because Linux is stamped on it. HP knows this. There's a good reason they're making billions as we sit, blog and bicker about technology.
And I have a hard time taking someone seriously who acts like Bill Gates is the reason that companies offered up Windows or stayed loyal to MS. What kind of oddball reasoning could make someone make that jump in logic?
You know, there are plenty of really good blogs out there but if we're going to continue to see more and more blog posts represented as legitimate news articles can we please flag them in some way so I can just chose to ignore them?
It would be a great read if I was one of the ten people on the face of the planet who could actually understand every detail. Oh, sorry, that's the people who wrote it.
I know it's going to get downloaded a ton of times and probably deleted before most readers ever get to the 3rd page, if it's even read at all.
Save them poor guys some bandwidth, torrent it. Too many people are going to be wasting their resources with no serious intentions of reading the contents.
It's looking to displace Microsoft with hosted services like Google Apps, Gmail and Google Docs.
You know, I hate to tell people this but most people really don't have a hard-on to see MS die. For the most part, in the professional world, people are going to use what works best in their environment regardless of branding or cost (within reasonable limits of course). It's pretty poor when you support "the other guy" because you hate someone else so much that you simply can not stand to see them succeed. In real life when you put that attitude into action you'll find that you waste a lot of good time and money on trying to sink the other guys ship when you could have done it by improving yourself and not only defeat them but also come off with a better product. What's the saying? There's no revenge as sweet as success? Spending resources to beat on someone else is counter productive and, frankly, petty.
The way you stated your numbers could have (and was) very easy to misconstrue. And I don't really think there is anyone out there who is representing the upswing in vinyl sales as a threat to CDs dominance in the market. So if it makes you happy, yes, vinyl numbers will remain small in the future. I don't think anyone here has questioned that. But from what you're saying it would be like saying that Linux on the desktop is dead. Or that Bentley cars are dead.
And in any case, your point about the gold/platinum album is just as moot considering that certification is based on the work and not the format. So even if these numbers are small they do contribute to the overall sales of a work.
Records sell in the hundreds, maybe thousands at very best.
Far from true.
Let's put it this way... People would pay more money to see Jerry on stage and fart into a microphone than what you make in a year.
I'm far from a Seinfeld fan but to deny his celebrity status and the weight it brings with it is just plainly stupid.
The thing is that you can't have "the same thing" as an iPod 160gb for 5 dollars. That's roughly what it works out to in the minds of the people who see the 600 dollar headphones compared to the 10 dollar ear buds.
Well, the first all digital recording for the mass market was Dire Strait's Brothers In Arms album and it was considered really advanced in it's own time. So, it's more likely that you'd be pretty safe with most recordings up to the early 90s. Some of this would also be determined by genre since I know that a lot of classical was a big early adopter of digital but your punk and garage band types may still be using older technology today.
And I know that some artists went back to analog recording because of the sound dynamics.
It use to be the most CDs came with the SPARS code on them (AAD, ADD, DDD, DAD) but this seems to have fallen by the wayside. It would be really interesting to see who still uses what technology today. Also consider that many may be using sample rates far over those of conventional CDs so the vinyl may still offer better dynamics in that fashion.
I guess the public at large just does not care about audio fidelity, or an immersive music experience.
The public at large cannot and will not pay for the immersive audio music experience and even less of them have hearing capable of enjoying it.
Let's be honest, for most people the 10 USD ear buds is more than enough in their opinion. Tell them you own a 600 USD set of Sennheisers and you'd swear that you just told them you just paid 600 USD for a candy bar.
Quality playback equipment is expensive. Most people can't justify 99 cents for a song, how do you think they can justify a few hundred to a few thousand for playback equipment?