I might be inclined to agree except that Sony has been touting the PS3 as the cheapest BR player on the market and calling it a good value for that alone. I would hope that Sony would know that NO ONE bought their DVD player because of the (then) massive storage capacity of DVDs. They bought them because they offered massive picture and audio quality upgrades compared to VHS and they were reasonably priced, even at launch they weren't outrageously expensive.
True, but we all know how marketing works.. They know everybody knows it's going to be a badass gaming console, we know that just from looking at it.. So they're going to push the Blu-Ray DVD angle just to make sure everyone knows about that too, then they'll find some other angle about the system to push I'm sure..
XB360 devs could very easily be sure that the targeted users had HD-DVDs by simply making the game Hd-DVD only. Just like for the console it self, good games will drive the peripheral sales. If some compelling titles that require HD size storage capacity hit the market, the demand for the drives will follow.
I hate when console makers try to use this bolt-on mentality to push peripheral sales.. once you pay for your 360 and your add-on HD-DVD device you've spent as much as you would have on a top end PS3 anyway (maybe more if you got the top end 360.) Luckily they haven't used it to push any games I was actually interested in.. Didn't a FF game come with the HDD? (what about us with new slim line ps2s?) I think consoles should come with what's in 'em, and games should be designed around that, anything else should be optional (like DDR mats, or maybe even an eye toy or a zapper gun, none of which are massive upgrades, just new controllers)
Even if Blu-Ray fails miserably, the fact that the drive is in the ps3 still gives developers a -lot- more room to work with. I've gone over this with a few people, I'm not convinced Sony is using this as a Blu-Ray DVD player vehicle for market penetration or anything like that. I think they were on-board with Blu-Ray and want to take advantage of their new format's obscene storage space to give themselves room to work for the next 5 years or so. Meaning if XB360 decides to add a HD-DVD add-on developers can't -count on- your system having it, so they still need to code for the lowest common denominator, and put their games on DVD, meanwhile Sony will have a lot more room built in standard, so their coders can constantly count on having that extra room..
Sure, a BR DVD player is a great bonus, but I'm not convinced it was the primary reason for their decision to use a BR drive.
The RIAA and MPAA remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy takes all of Linus' toys away, and leaves him a rubber band to play with... I've got to dig that up, it's so appropriate (do you remember it?).
Careful! Someone may want to start selling comics online next!
I don't think that's true at all. The reason you couldn't get those things back in the day was that there was no internet.
There was no DVD either, the point is -- you could not purchase most movies on VHS for several months after they were released on video (unless you wanted to pay a hundred bucks a piece).. This isn't advanced math or something, VHS tapes were sold to video stores at a very high price making it not worth purchasing a copy to any consumer in order to rape the video stores for a few months, once they rental market was satisfied -then- they would release the tapes to the general public for 15/20 bucks, that's all I was saying...
And where are you from? If you live in the US, them I assume that by "only certain movies" you mean "every movie I have ever seen in a theatre or on TV, and a lot more besides."
You couldn't get random indie films or foreign flicks from the usual places. The same would be true of DVD as well, but now we have the internet to sell things that are too unpopular or esoteric to sell otherwise.
This has nothing to do with VHS.
This had something to do with VHS, in fact, from what I recall that was a major point of the post. It was the comparison of VHS and DVD to DVD and HD/Blu-Ray. DVD, after acceptance, you could get a copy of -any- movie for purchase at the same time the video stores got it to stock. VHS used to be (for most movies) priced up to $100 per movie to give the movie companies a chance to make some real coin off of the video stores for several months before releasing a movie for retail sale to suck some cash out of the rest of us. (I worked at blockbuster when DVD first came out, and at one of the first blockbusters to offer DVD rentals.)
Don't keep bitching about the fucking price because all that shows is that you want the PS3 but are too poor to afford one. If you can't spend 700-800 dollars on electronics then you need to get a better job.
Wow, that may just be the most pompus statement I've ever read on this site. Wish I were in your position in life where I could spit on the little people and call them cry-babies for bitching about a $600+ video game system.
This is a tech site, we all are overpayed pro's. If this was a site for factory workers and cleaners I could understand but not software engineers and other techies. This ain't a place for minimum wage workers.
Really? I've heard a lot of comments by people who are unemployed, or underpaid, or just technically oriented college students (like the story about the MIDAS MIT kids)... Guess they should all 'get the fuck off of your site' huh? Well, at least until they grow up and get a real job.. Not just rich people are smart and/or technically inclined.
In fact, now that I think about it, the people with the money (from my experience) are -less- technically inclined, they won't be bitching about the price of the PS3 when they pick one up for every kid in their family -- but then again they won't know what a Blu-Ray drive is to begin with, either.
When the PS2 came out, people were thinking "man, I need a DVD player."
Guilty. Actually when I got my ps2 I had probably 50 movies on DVD which I watched on my roomie's DVD player, didn't have one of my own. But I wasn't going to live there forever, and maybe now n' then I wanted to watch something in my room (he had a nice big 62" in the living room, so that's where the ps2 stayed) so I could take the ps2 to my room and watch there. So I got it for the games, but the DVD player was a very nice convenience.
You also forgot to mention that the PS2 was a terrible DVD player. It had huge compatibility problems reading DVDs. It's entirely possible the people who bought the PS2 as a DVD player (and then probably bought a real DVD player later) still remember the hassle of trying to use it.
I never had a problem playing DVDs until maybe 3 years after I bought it... actually closer to 4 or 5.. But I was also having problems playing GAMES by that point. Tried to fix the laser myself with the screwdriver trick, but that failed, took it to sony's building about 10 miles from my house, they fixed it for free, and it was ready by noon the next day, stopped having problems playing DVDs or games. This was a -real- testiment to Sony's customer service to me, on the phone they said it'd take a month that i'd have to ship it out, they'd estimate the cost, i'd have to approve it, they'd fix it and send it back.. got it to a building they had near me, they said come back tomorrow before lunch and it'll be ready, no pickup fee or anything.
With the PS2, Sony was marketing bling to the mass markets. Now, they're marketing bling to a niche market. If they think they're going to get the same response, they are very, very wrong.
This may be true, but I think we've gotten a little bit off-topic, they're going to be using Blu-Ray to squeeze a ton of data onto their discs, god knows we'll be using it at -some- point as games get larger, splitting it up into 2 discs sucks, IMO, I hate having to flip over movies that span more than one disc, what is this, laserdisc? If they've got the technology for a high density storage drive, they may as well use it. The fact that they're adding the functionality to play MOVIES on it is just a bonus. I think they would have used BR Drives even if they -didn't- plan on allowing people to play movies on them, for the sole purpose of getting great graphics onto one disc. Nice n' convenient.
FTR: I'll probably get a ps3 at some point I'm sure, maybe after the first price drop, but I seriously doubt I'll be buying any BR movies for it, I don't plan on using it to play movies, even though it's capable. Then again, I don't have an HDTV, if I did, I might try one or two out, but DVD is just fine for me for now.
but given the very obvious advantages over VHS (which, to most consumers, was "never need to rewind")
Don't forget the fact that only certain movies were available on VHS. Even then they ran $15, $20 if you got the widescreen version, and $99 if you wanted something that wasn't a blockbuster hit.
"And there's no reason consoles couldn't use the same solution used for PC games -the hard drive. Seriously, kick the drive size up to 200 GB, go with a standard dual-layer DVD drive, and drop the price."
Sure there is, creating hardware for the lowest common demoninator. I know people who've bought new memory cards because they filled one and didn't know how to erase the games. Obviously you could create a very simple interface to remove games from the HDD, but then again, how hard is it to delete memory card entries?
I'm a computer guy, and I'm a console guy. I don't mind having to go through the major inconvenience of opening a drive and putting in the disc I feel like playing. Granted, playing games off of the HDD a'la hacked xbox or something could be nice at times, but not everybody's an expert, especially when it comes to console gaming, they want to make it easy for -everybody-, and the 'drop in a disc and play it' is about as easy as it gets.
Speak for yourself. Many users want Google Earth, Picasa, Google tool bar, etc. I certainly do, though I don't personally need them on Windows.
I like Picasa, and google toolbar a lot (never tried earth). But as a firefox user I've installed the google toolbar and found it redundant. The pagerank stuff was nice, but i'm not a web developer.. When I want to run a lucky search I type it in my address bar, when I want to google something I hit tab once and type it in the google search bar.. If I were an IE user I'd want google toolbar in a bad way, though.
I'd definitely want picasa on a windows installation, never played around with desktop at all, but I can see its usefulness.. I wouldn't mind having this stuff installed by default. I'm sure there's a hundred other things that'll be in the install that I could do without, but these wouldn't be among them...
If te thief decides to not use the net with the laptop, youre chances of getting it back are zero. So there goes the money you spent on both the laptop and the software. I wonder if the money back guarantee takes that into account?
Yeah maybe he just wants it for gaming HAHAHA!!
The only system I ever use regularly is my powerbook;P
at which point, removing Undercover becomes much simpler. And if there isn't a BIOS password to begin with, Undercover's also trivial to remove with target-mode booting and another Mac.
We should also remember that said thief will need to -look for- this program... Not every laptop thief reads/., and I had never heard of this before, so I wouldn't know to look for it (until now) either. Not only that but to remove it you'd have to boot up, and (I know, I haven't read yet:() does this thing phone home every time you boot? because if so, even if you do know what to look for and where to look for, if you boot up you're already screwed. (obviously you could mount the system as a firewire drive, but that goes back to the original point..)
Or get both? Then you might get your computer back... if not, you get your new system and put your backups on it, and it'll still only cost you $30 more...
Also what if I wrap a DVD for a gift for someone, put it in a fedex package and send it out? Is fedex going to rewrap my gift for me? Is it going to get there the way I intended it? It's not a -huge- point, but it'd be important to me. If this is true there's no way I'll ever use UPS again... Hell, I'm a major DVD collector and I'm questioning whether I want to continue that... I've always hated the RIAA's bitching and whining, but that wasn't a big deal, I was never a big CD collector (To the RIAA: No, that doesn't mean all I do is pirate music, it means I listen to the radio you bastards.) This almost puts the MPAA to the same level as the RIAA IMO, not that they were worlds apart before, but damn, that's intrusive on a lot of levels. Can't wait to see them try this with the USPS.
Only if you consider hitting a quick sequence of buttons on your remote control ( select-play-3-0-select ) once per reboot of the TiVo hacking, I guess. It's more like a cheat code.
I have a TiVo and I don't even bother with the code.. the FFWD feature is fine for me, and I'm not even using their remote (which would be even nicer, I use a Philips TSU500 LCD remote without tactile feedback) I just press FFWD 3 times to get it up to max speed, once I see the show I hit it one more time and it goes back to play mode about 10 seconds earlier, I catch maybe 2 seconds of commercial and the show is back on... after you do it enough you pretty much know exactly where to stop... I never have a problem with it..
I have a TiVo with Cox analog extended basic and I don't use a decoder box. On our system you only need a cable box if you have a digital dcoder.
Hmm... yeah I have HBO so I need the box I think... Maybe I can run it without the box if I just get extended basic... well, we'll find out once the Sopranos season is over, thanks for the tip!
I've used the Cox DVR -- In my opinion, it sucks, it's godawful and I used it for maybe a week, never even got around to watching anything it recorded, and it 'crashed' for lack of a better word and said I had to call CS to get it turned back on because "Your set top box is not authorized to use this service" or something, couldn't even -watch- tv... that thing was a piece of trash compared to a TiVo, which I purchased shortly after. Only problem with the cable TiVos is that you need the TiVo, AND the cable box, and you use the IR dongles to manipulate the cable box... I know there's not really any other way, but that kinda blows. I miss my DirecTiVo, dual tuners, just plug 'em in and you're good to go, no questions.
If the cable companies would start issuing decoder cards (isn't that what they are?) that you could slide into your TiVo to eliminate the need for a set top cable box as well, they'd probably save money by not having to provide all of these boxes and just giving people cards, as well as making things a lot more convenient for us.
All that aside, if Cox offers a TiVo based box, I very well may sell my TiVo and get one of theirs, assuming it's the same thing.
So thanks, Rockstar, for being idiots and forgetting to delete the mini-game you had to disable at the last minute to keep your "M" rating. And thanks even MORE for lying about it, making US look like jerks for defending you.
I played through all of GTA:SA and beat the game and I'd never seen this mini game.
My point is -- Rockstar didn't do anything wrong. You had to go out of your way to get this 'hot coffee' game, and it really wasn't worth my time or energy, so I didn't do it. I didn't care, I beat the game as it stood and never saw any sex mini game (I did beat hookers and kill cops, though, but I guess that's a lot less offensive.)
Again, Rockstar didn't do anything wrong, the assholes chasing them down in this witchhunt did. Some people just have too much free time on their hands.
And a parallel might not require banning mannequins wholesale. What about banning mannequins with unnecessarily graphic details. For example, do mannequins require coloration of the nipple?
But adult stores use mannequins too, and it may be appropriate for the clothing -they- would be using it for... It'd be the store's fault for not covering it up correctly if there were a problem with this...
1. The stated reason was to make Han seem less cold-blooded
But it's good that he's cold-blooded at that point at least, it was him and chewwie out for themselves and their money and nobody else... show's character development throughout the trilogy when he begins to fight for someone other than just himself. (but we all know that)
When they say built into the OS I picture something like Dictionary... a standalone uninstallable program, that damn near every program ties into it for spellchecking.. Or maybe Spotlight?
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I might be inclined to agree except that Sony has been touting the PS3 as the cheapest BR player on the market and calling it a good value for that alone. I would hope that Sony would know that NO ONE bought their DVD player because of the (then) massive storage capacity of DVDs. They bought them because they offered massive picture and audio quality upgrades compared to VHS and they were reasonably priced, even at launch they weren't outrageously expensive.
True, but we all know how marketing works.. They know everybody knows it's going to be a badass gaming console, we know that just from looking at it.. So they're going to push the Blu-Ray DVD angle just to make sure everyone knows about that too, then they'll find some other angle about the system to push I'm sure..
XB360 devs could very easily be sure that the targeted users had HD-DVDs by simply making the game Hd-DVD only. Just like for the console it self, good games will drive the peripheral sales. If some compelling titles that require HD size storage capacity hit the market, the demand for the drives will follow.
I hate when console makers try to use this bolt-on mentality to push peripheral sales.. once you pay for your 360 and your add-on HD-DVD device you've spent as much as you would have on a top end PS3 anyway (maybe more if you got the top end 360.) Luckily they haven't used it to push any games I was actually interested in.. Didn't a FF game come with the HDD? (what about us with new slim line ps2s?) I think consoles should come with what's in 'em, and games should be designed around that, anything else should be optional (like DDR mats, or maybe even an eye toy or a zapper gun, none of which are massive upgrades, just new controllers)
Even if Blu-Ray fails miserably, the fact that the drive is in the ps3 still gives developers a -lot- more room to work with. I've gone over this with a few people, I'm not convinced Sony is using this as a Blu-Ray DVD player vehicle for market penetration or anything like that. I think they were on-board with Blu-Ray and want to take advantage of their new format's obscene storage space to give themselves room to work for the next 5 years or so. Meaning if XB360 decides to add a HD-DVD add-on developers can't -count on- your system having it, so they still need to code for the lowest common denominator, and put their games on DVD, meanwhile Sony will have a lot more room built in standard, so their coders can constantly count on having that extra room..
Sure, a BR DVD player is a great bonus, but I'm not convinced it was the primary reason for their decision to use a BR drive.
The RIAA and MPAA remind me of an old Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy takes all of Linus' toys away, and leaves him a rubber band to play with... I've got to dig that up, it's so appropriate (do you remember it?).
Careful! Someone may want to start selling comics online next!
I don't think that's true at all. The reason you couldn't get those things back in the day was that there was no internet.
.. This isn't advanced math or something, VHS tapes were sold to video stores at a very high price making it not worth purchasing a copy to any consumer in order to rape the video stores for a few months, once they rental market was satisfied -then- they would release the tapes to the general public for 15/20 bucks, that's all I was saying...
There was no DVD either, the point is -- you could not purchase most movies on VHS for several months after they were released on video (unless you wanted to pay a hundred bucks a piece)
And where are you from? If you live in the US, them I assume that by "only certain movies" you mean "every movie I have ever seen in a theatre or on TV, and a lot more besides."
You couldn't get random indie films or foreign flicks from the usual places. The same would be true of DVD as well, but now we have the internet to sell things that are too unpopular or esoteric to sell otherwise.
This has nothing to do with VHS.
This had something to do with VHS, in fact, from what I recall that was a major point of the post. It was the comparison of VHS and DVD to DVD and HD/Blu-Ray. DVD, after acceptance, you could get a copy of -any- movie for purchase at the same time the video stores got it to stock. VHS used to be (for most movies) priced up to $100 per movie to give the movie companies a chance to make some real coin off of the video stores for several months before releasing a movie for retail sale to suck some cash out of the rest of us. (I worked at blockbuster when DVD first came out, and at one of the first blockbusters to offer DVD rentals.)
Don't keep bitching about the fucking price because all that shows is that you want the PS3 but are too poor to afford one. If you can't spend 700-800 dollars on electronics then you need to get a better job.
... Guess they should all 'get the fuck off of your site' huh? Well, at least until they grow up and get a real job.. Not just rich people are smart and/or technically inclined.
Wow, that may just be the most pompus statement I've ever read on this site. Wish I were in your position in life where I could spit on the little people and call them cry-babies for bitching about a $600+ video game system.
This is a tech site, we all are overpayed pro's. If this was a site for factory workers and cleaners I could understand but not software engineers and other techies. This ain't a place for minimum wage workers.
Really? I've heard a lot of comments by people who are unemployed, or underpaid, or just technically oriented college students (like the story about the MIDAS MIT kids)
In fact, now that I think about it, the people with the money (from my experience) are -less- technically inclined, they won't be bitching about the price of the PS3 when they pick one up for every kid in their family -- but then again they won't know what a Blu-Ray drive is to begin with, either.
When the PS2 came out, people were thinking "man, I need a DVD player."
Guilty. Actually when I got my ps2 I had probably 50 movies on DVD which I watched on my roomie's DVD player, didn't have one of my own. But I wasn't going to live there forever, and maybe now n' then I wanted to watch something in my room (he had a nice big 62" in the living room, so that's where the ps2 stayed) so I could take the ps2 to my room and watch there. So I got it for the games, but the DVD player was a very nice convenience.
You also forgot to mention that the PS2 was a terrible DVD player. It had huge compatibility problems reading DVDs. It's entirely possible the people who bought the PS2 as a DVD player (and then probably bought a real DVD player later) still remember the hassle of trying to use it.
I never had a problem playing DVDs until maybe 3 years after I bought it... actually closer to 4 or 5.. But I was also having problems playing GAMES by that point. Tried to fix the laser myself with the screwdriver trick, but that failed, took it to sony's building about 10 miles from my house, they fixed it for free, and it was ready by noon the next day, stopped having problems playing DVDs or games. This was a -real- testiment to Sony's customer service to me, on the phone they said it'd take a month that i'd have to ship it out, they'd estimate the cost, i'd have to approve it, they'd fix it and send it back.. got it to a building they had near me, they said come back tomorrow before lunch and it'll be ready, no pickup fee or anything.
With the PS2, Sony was marketing bling to the mass markets. Now, they're marketing bling to a niche market. If they think they're going to get the same response, they are very, very wrong.
This may be true, but I think we've gotten a little bit off-topic, they're going to be using Blu-Ray to squeeze a ton of data onto their discs, god knows we'll be using it at -some- point as games get larger, splitting it up into 2 discs sucks, IMO, I hate having to flip over movies that span more than one disc, what is this, laserdisc? If they've got the technology for a high density storage drive, they may as well use it. The fact that they're adding the functionality to play MOVIES on it is just a bonus. I think they would have used BR Drives even if they -didn't- plan on allowing people to play movies on them, for the sole purpose of getting great graphics onto one disc. Nice n' convenient.
FTR: I'll probably get a ps3 at some point I'm sure, maybe after the first price drop, but I seriously doubt I'll be buying any BR movies for it, I don't plan on using it to play movies, even though it's capable. Then again, I don't have an HDTV, if I did, I might try one or two out, but DVD is just fine for me for now.
but given the very obvious advantages over VHS (which, to most consumers, was "never need to rewind")
Don't forget the fact that only certain movies were available on VHS. Even then they ran $15, $20 if you got the widescreen version, and $99 if you wanted something that wasn't a blockbuster hit.
"And there's no reason consoles couldn't use the same solution used for PC games -the hard drive. Seriously, kick the drive size up to 200 GB, go with a standard dual-layer DVD drive, and drop the price."
Sure there is, creating hardware for the lowest common demoninator. I know people who've bought new memory cards because they filled one and didn't know how to erase the games. Obviously you could create a very simple interface to remove games from the HDD, but then again, how hard is it to delete memory card entries?
I'm a computer guy, and I'm a console guy. I don't mind having to go through the major inconvenience of opening a drive and putting in the disc I feel like playing. Granted, playing games off of the HDD a'la hacked xbox or something could be nice at times, but not everybody's an expert, especially when it comes to console gaming, they want to make it easy for -everybody-, and the 'drop in a disc and play it' is about as easy as it gets.
Speak for yourself. Many users want Google Earth, Picasa, Google tool bar, etc. I certainly do, though I don't personally need them on Windows.
I like Picasa, and google toolbar a lot (never tried earth). But as a firefox user I've installed the google toolbar and found it redundant. The pagerank stuff was nice, but i'm not a web developer.. When I want to run a lucky search I type it in my address bar, when I want to google something I hit tab once and type it in the google search bar.. If I were an IE user I'd want google toolbar in a bad way, though.
I'd definitely want picasa on a windows installation, never played around with desktop at all, but I can see its usefulness.. I wouldn't mind having this stuff installed by default. I'm sure there's a hundred other things that'll be in the install that I could do without, but these wouldn't be among them...
If te thief decides to not use the net with the laptop, youre chances of getting it back are zero. So there goes the money you spent on both the laptop and the software. I wonder if the money back guarantee takes that into account?
;P
Yeah maybe he just wants it for gaming HAHAHA!!
The only system I ever use regularly is my powerbook
at which point, removing Undercover becomes much simpler. And if there isn't a BIOS password to begin with, Undercover's also trivial to remove with target-mode booting and another Mac.
/., and I had never heard of this before, so I wouldn't know to look for it (until now) either. Not only that but to remove it you'd have to boot up, and (I know, I haven't read yet :() does this thing phone home every time you boot? because if so, even if you do know what to look for and where to look for, if you boot up you're already screwed. (obviously you could mount the system as a firewire drive, but that goes back to the original point..)
We should also remember that said thief will need to -look for- this program... Not every laptop thief reads
Or get both? Then you might get your computer back... if not, you get your new system and put your backups on it, and it'll still only cost you $30 more...
So this is different, apparantly XM subscribers can store songs on the unit.
Good thing I don't have my boom box from back in the mid to late 80s... I was able to record radio->cassette.
The RIAA has a lot of nerve... Greedy bastards, soon they'll come after people for humming in the shower.
Also what if I wrap a DVD for a gift for someone, put it in a fedex package and send it out? Is fedex going to rewrap my gift for me? Is it going to get there the way I intended it? It's not a -huge- point, but it'd be important to me. If this is true there's no way I'll ever use UPS again... Hell, I'm a major DVD collector and I'm questioning whether I want to continue that... I've always hated the RIAA's bitching and whining, but that wasn't a big deal, I was never a big CD collector (To the RIAA: No, that doesn't mean all I do is pirate music, it means I listen to the radio you bastards.) This almost puts the MPAA to the same level as the RIAA IMO, not that they were worlds apart before, but damn, that's intrusive on a lot of levels. Can't wait to see them try this with the USPS.
Only if you consider hitting a quick sequence of buttons on your remote control ( select-play-3-0-select ) once per reboot of the TiVo hacking, I guess. It's more like a cheat code.
I have a TiVo and I don't even bother with the code.. the FFWD feature is fine for me, and I'm not even using their remote (which would be even nicer, I use a Philips TSU500 LCD remote without tactile feedback) I just press FFWD 3 times to get it up to max speed, once I see the show I hit it one more time and it goes back to play mode about 10 seconds earlier, I catch maybe 2 seconds of commercial and the show is back on... after you do it enough you pretty much know exactly where to stop... I never have a problem with it..
I have a TiVo with Cox analog extended basic and I don't use a decoder box. On our system you only need a cable box if you have a digital dcoder.
Hmm... yeah I have HBO so I need the box I think... Maybe I can run it without the box if I just get extended basic... well, we'll find out once the Sopranos season is over, thanks for the tip!
I've used the Cox DVR -- In my opinion, it sucks, it's godawful and I used it for maybe a week, never even got around to watching anything it recorded, and it 'crashed' for lack of a better word and said I had to call CS to get it turned back on because "Your set top box is not authorized to use this service" or something, couldn't even -watch- tv... that thing was a piece of trash compared to a TiVo, which I purchased shortly after. Only problem with the cable TiVos is that you need the TiVo, AND the cable box, and you use the IR dongles to manipulate the cable box... I know there's not really any other way, but that kinda blows. I miss my DirecTiVo, dual tuners, just plug 'em in and you're good to go, no questions.
If the cable companies would start issuing decoder cards (isn't that what they are?) that you could slide into your TiVo to eliminate the need for a set top cable box as well, they'd probably save money by not having to provide all of these boxes and just giving people cards, as well as making things a lot more convenient for us.
All that aside, if Cox offers a TiVo based box, I very well may sell my TiVo and get one of theirs, assuming it's the same thing.
So thanks, Rockstar, for being idiots and forgetting to delete the mini-game you had to disable at the last minute to keep your "M" rating. And thanks even MORE for lying about it, making US look like jerks for defending you.
I played through all of GTA:SA and beat the game and I'd never seen this mini game.
My point is -- Rockstar didn't do anything wrong. You had to go out of your way to get this 'hot coffee' game, and it really wasn't worth my time or energy, so I didn't do it. I didn't care, I beat the game as it stood and never saw any sex mini game (I did beat hookers and kill cops, though, but I guess that's a lot less offensive.)
Again, Rockstar didn't do anything wrong, the assholes chasing them down in this witchhunt did. Some people just have too much free time on their hands.
And a parallel might not require banning mannequins wholesale. What about banning mannequins with unnecessarily graphic details. For example, do mannequins require coloration of the nipple?
But adult stores use mannequins too, and it may be appropriate for the clothing -they- would be using it for... It'd be the store's fault for not covering it up correctly if there were a problem with this...
1. The stated reason was to make Han seem less cold-blooded
But it's good that he's cold-blooded at that point at least, it was him and chewwie out for themselves and their money and nobody else... show's character development throughout the trilogy when he begins to fight for someone other than just himself. (but we all know that)
Shh! No pointing out the gaping plot holes!
:P
Yeah, or we'll be here all day..
So then Fox sends Greedo over, and Lucas knows what a twitchy finger Greedo has... And Lucas doesn't want to have to repaint...
Then what happened? Lucas shot first?
Man, they could at least remake films that had some redeeming qualities in the first place.
Man, why can't they bring back or remake good shows like B.J. and the Bear. Now there's a concept I can't get enough of: a man and his monkey.
When they say built into the OS I picture something like Dictionary... a standalone uninstallable program, that damn near every program ties into it for spellchecking.. Or maybe Spotlight?