I think you nailed it with that right there... A lot of people will be getting some form of HD DVD player when they buy an entire new rig, like when my parents got their 65" HD Mitsubishi, they got a nice amp that came with it, a nice dvd player (valued at something like 300 at the time?) and nice speakers, etc... but they got what the TV place gave them with it.. [not that my parents are dumb on the subject, dad's educated on the subject and replaced the pieces that were substandard] but the thing is, adoption may also be decided partially by what the salesman says goes well with the TV you just bought.. or based on the type of HD DVD that store decides to carry, if not both.
It'd be an interesting experiment to check out a BestBuy or someplace that is selling both players and both movies right now and see what kind of sales push you get.. now that I think about it, those store salespeople have an awful lot of power when it comes to deciding the fate of the 2 competing HD DVD standards.
I myself, and pretty much everyone I know though, are sticking with DVD... (for reasons other than financial, heh.)
So now, let's see -- for the hundreds of CDs that I have, I would have to make a playlist for all the artists. That's time spent making over a hundred playlists from data that I *already* have organized in a folder format.
I've copied all of my CDs to iTunes.. When it was importing them it grabbed the CD info from CDDB and filled out all of my ID3 tags correctly, sometimes I disagree with the genre it selects, but it gets the artist/album/tracks right....
Now, try dragging and dropping a few hundred tracks called Track XYZ and watch iTunes sort it. Oh yeah, brilliant. The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh.
It works great if your ID3 tags are all set up correctly.. It was a bit tedious for me at first when I got started to get my tags all organized, but now I can find anything I want, quickly.. And it does grab CD names and information from CDDB.. well, it does for me at least...
Althought it all boils down to personal preference -- I don't like laptops with 2 mouse buttons. After using my powerbook(s) for the past 7 years or so, I may have grown biased, but I am truly more comfortable using ctrl+click for a 'right click' than I am with a dual button trackpad on a laptop. I generally don't use right click nearly as much as left click, so I don't really need the right click button out there. When I need to right click, my hands are always on the keyboard anyway, ctrl isn't that hard to reach, and IMO, more comfortable and convenient than having to pay attention to which mouse button I'm hitting. Especially when I don't usually need a "right" button..
No more or less stupid than gladiator combat, boxing, or martial arts except in this case it's satire. It's a look at how a computer generated culture views the macro-universe. Yes... it's stupid... that's the point... life is a series of conflict and resolutions no better than tossing around DayGlo Frisbees.
Plus it brought us Deadly Discs of Tron in the arcade, which was great fun!;D
Tron was so cutting edge that a lot of people did not like it. I have always liked the film and I really wish Disney would reshoot the film using the CGI of today. Maybe a Tron version II.
If you're into gaming you might want to check out Tron 2.0. It can be found at pretty much any used game store for 10 or 15 bucks nowdays. It's an FPS and not really... not normal, you get upgraded to a point release with experience, and with each release you get to upgrade yourself, upgrade weapons, all kinds of stuff, while traveling throughout the network fighting viruses and malware in PCs, PDAs, mainframes, etc etc.. That's part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was the creativity, which more than makes up for the awkwardness of the control, either way, for 15 bucks it's a good deal IMO.
For that matter...what would stop the community from hacking a Tivo box to use the service that something like Myth uses, Zap2It? Or...could some enterprising person sell tivo guide service on their own? What would be stopping that?
I don't have the link onhand, but someone sent me a link to do just that a while back... There's all kinds of hacks for it, I'm sure you'll be able to get it to do whatever you want..
How exactly are they making it more difficult to avoid commercials? I still fast forward through them just like before. The only change I've noticed is more commercials support Tivo's "press thumbs up for more info" thing if you do watch them.
Although I'll probably be outcast for this opinion, but I kinda like that more commercials are supporting the thumbs up button. Especially when you can schedule a recording of a show based on the commercial for that show playing, without jumping through any hoops or even needing to stop watching what you were watching by being moved to the TiVo menu to schedule said recording.. pretty convenient. I think that's only available in 'live tv' mode though, can't confirm, because I also usually blast through commercials still.
Now, of course, there's absolutely no reason not to prohibit having ringers on, and people whose ringers go off or who answer the phone and start talking in the middle of the theater should be thrown out and possibly barred in the future.
You know what I'd like to see in a feature, is the ability to shut off the phone, and still keep the SMS/paging features of it. Sometimes I just don't want to be disturbed by a phone call, but would like to have my phone in a 'pager mode' so that I can still get server notifications and such, things like that.. Have people go straight to voice mail, but alert me with a quiet beep or vibration that someone had left a message after they call, then I can call them back at my leisure, or earliest convenience... or immediately, depending on the nature of the message, either way I could avoid disturbing other people with -my- issues.
I hate the argument that people are being prevented from contacting anyone as if before cellphones everyone trapped in a burning building was destined to die there.
Case 1: If you're in a concert hall and there's armed robbers taking everyone's money, chances are they're not going to make it easy for you to make that call either, and if you manage, they're probably not going to be terribly happy with you about it.
Case 2: If you're in a burning office and the fire is keeping you from escaping you may still be able to use a land-line, afterall, you're in an office, plus i'd probably be too busy trying to find alternate ways out to be bothered with a phone call anyway...
I've stated it earlier in this thread, but I don't think it can be overstated, but I think cellphones are becoming a -ridiculous- dependancy. Do you -really- need to make/accept phone calls in a theater? or at a concert? or at dinner? or on your way to the video store? I'm on call pretty much at all times, but if I'm going to go to a movie I make sure someone's covering for me for a couple hours and shut off my phone, any calls that come in during dinner can generally wait a half hour until I leave, or 5 minutes until I can excuse myself and get away from the table.
Sure it's a minor convenience in some cases, but a lot of people take it to a point where they just become rude and/or inconsiderate. (IMO)
Cell phones have to be turned off for the duration of the flight. Nobody's yacking until you land, and then there's a veritable symphony of cell phones turning on.
Almost makes you wonder just how some people survived before the invention huh?
Not disagreeing that the iBoombox is a little... odd, but the integration with an iPod makes sense. You're not running your iPod's batteries down, and there are no extra wires hanging around. And it looks like the iBoombox does have an aux-in (minijack or SPDIF), so it would work with your digital radio receiver, CD player, 8-track, etc.
What I don't like is -- The HiFi seems to be made for home use -- If I'm at home I'd rather plug an airport express for $129 into my AV receiver and pump it through my surround system. The one upside to the HiFi is the fact that you can take it out to the pool or something, but for home use? I'd rather control it using iTunes on my powerbook through an Airport Express. Either that or hook up a mac mini to the AV receiver a'la home theater box and do it that way. Managing what I'm playing, changing songs, etc seems like it would be awkward if you're doing it on a -docked- iPod...
What I really want to know is, what genius thought it would be a good idea [...]
Actually, one thing I'm wondering, is what console makers think about this. The people responsible for Playstation, XBox, Nintendo, who actually know more about what it takes to plan/build/test/advertise/release a console. I'm sure their thoughts on the subject would be pretty interesting.
Also, when I saw this headline I was waiting for the story about DNF being delayed for some reason as well, heh.
Wait, you spend $400 for an Xbox 360 and $60 each for a few (3) games, which leaves $320. Assuming each girl gets the same amount, this means you just boinked two cheap hos.
Hey one man's trash is another man's treasure I suppose;D
1. Street Fighter II - Did anyone *not* care about this game in 1992 or whenever that was?
Hah! Picked up Hyper Fighting at an arcade auction for $200 I liked it so much. Even have a PCB for SFII:World Warriors with all the fun Guile glitches;D
But to jump back on topic, Anyone else remember Gorilla? that came with QBasic? Where you're a gorilla fighting another gorilla with exploding bananas using angle+velocity? Scorched Earth? Chopper Commando? Also surprised Oregon Trail hasn't been mentioned yet.
For example, how hard is it to kill the ringer after the first ring (if you must have it ring instead of vibrate in the first place)? My phone does it, and it's one of the cheap "free with a contract" phones.
Apparently some people don't know about that 'feature'. I was in a restaurant the other night and someone's phone rang, he looked at it, and then put it back in his pocket and let it ring until it went to voice mail. Ridiculous, I can't believe he would be that rude or inconsiderate (or maybe he is!) in a restaurant, I'm -hoping- it was ignorance. Maybe the sales associates should point out the more important features such as hitting the volume button to stop the ringer when you don't want to answer?
Why increase your reliance on complicated technology when you can easily get what you need without it? And furthermore, if you can't have your cell phone with you for the large part of the day, what's the point of having it in the first place? If you have a 30-minute drive to work all it means is that you get all your voicemails 30 minutes earlier than if you just had the phone at home.
Well, first off, if the phone is left in the car during the day, why does it need to be on silent? leave it audible and in the glove compartment or something, chances are when you take it out after getting into the car you're going to check the screen anyway. Plus any message that's important enough that it can't wait until you get home, could generally be called into the office and left with the receptionist, left on your voice mail, told to you directly, etc, etc... Anything else can wait.
Almost makes you wonder how some people survived before cellphones and pagers huh? Makes me miss the days of having to pull over to a pay-phone when a pager went off.
I have a treo600 now, and -wish- I could shut off the phone while keeping the SMS (for server notifications) on sometimes. Sometimes I just do not want to be disturbed at all unless it's absolutely necessary (like a server going down).. Anyone have any suggestions other than separate devices?
Internet radio doesn't work because radio doesn't work.
If radio worked Howard Stern wouldn't need to be on Sirius.
And internet radio fails because they don't/won't have Howard Stern.
At ~$30M/yr, I don't think Stern was starving, it seems to have worked well enough for him. I think Stern's move had more to do with the FCC and the fact that he was constantly running into censorship issues, understandably.
Also not to blatently plug or anything, but people keep saying that internet radio doesn't work and there's nothing good on -- If you're into Talk Radio, Stern's old station in CA (KLSX) recently went online at 971freefm.com. Pretty good stuff (I personally can't stand Corolla, but a lot of the other stuff is good if you like Talk Radio.)
Well I'd say this was the wrong decision. Aibo and Qrio are in everyone's mouth. Everyone wants one, but they are just too darn expensive.
Absolutely. I've always thought these things were cool since I first heard about them about 5 years ago(?). Well, I've never had any personal experience with one of these things until visiting the local SonyStyle store. They've got an Aibo there and the thing is just too damned cool, all of the tricks it does and the things they've programmed it to do (Apparently the CSRs programmed him to bow to any Asst. Mgrs as a joke when they walk into view of the dog.) among other things I would love to get one of these things, but at $2k starting price, it's just not in the cards for me yet. Killing it off is just going to make it even harder to get if someday I -am- so inclined to get one. Or maybe it'll make it dirt cheap, let's hope for the later.;)
Re:Big Brother and the iTunes Company
on
iTunes is Malware?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Can the feature even be turned off by those dilligent enough to do so? (Short of resorting to firewalling?)
Yup. I was able to shut it off moments after seeing it on.. I didn't even know what it was doing there, why I couldn't shut it off or that it was even watching what I was playing. I just went into options, parental controls, and shut off the music store because I don't use it anyway, if I want to buy something from the ITMS I'll just go enable it and purchase, then disable it again..
Also I saw an article today here at macosxhints.com (via slashbox) which explains how to do it too: "Thankfully, there's an easy workaround. Kirk McElhearn used tcpdump to verify that if you simply disable the mini store (Edit: Hide Ministore, or just Shift-Command-M), then no data is transmitted. So that's the hint -- if you value the privacy of your listening habits, then hide the mini store. "
I think there's a couple thousand people who would disagree with that statement bucko. Also mention how Buckaroo Bonzai, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Equilibrium "were horrible and everyone you ask will say the same".
You're right, I don't even remember writing that and wonder why i'd put something so blatent and definite. However I can safely say that the vast majority thought it was horrible at least right?;) Hell, every movie out there's got at least one person who likes it.
I beg to differ. Something is lost. No one will make a proper adaptation of a video game movie when a crappy one has already been made.
First thing that came to mind for me was The Punisher (Although a comic movie, not a Game movie, but follow me here) The Dolph version of that movie was horrible and everyone you ask will say the same, the newer one that came out a couple years ago was quite a lot better. Same goes (loosly) for Batman, the first two were great, the second two were horrible, awful and should be destroyed, yet Batman Begins was totally redeeming... So they could possibly make a Bloodrayne II (or whatever flop game/comic movie) and make it better than it was before. I do agree with you though, it's hard... and you can't unsee the terrible movies that ruined the franchise in the first place. Ugh... Street Fighter....
You are correct. I have a dual optical logitech USB mouse with a little thumb button toward the bottom of the thumb resting area, that little button has become my quickest and easiest way to switch windows after assigning it to the (f9) expose' function.. Made my life a helluva lot easier. Plus both buttons and the scrollwheel (and the scroll click) all worked by default just by plugging the damned thing in. So, I've never had an issue with more than one button on my powerbook.
Who's to say they're not both right.. Maybe God was a monkey, and created us in his image from which we've evolved to what we are now!...I'm just saaayin'
No, they won't feel it. With a multi-billion dollar / month cashflow (a major part of it being net profit) they are not going to feel a fee like this. $2.4M/day = approx. $7.5M/month
Of course they would. Businesses don't want to move backwards at any point. They'll do whatever they can to save a buck here or a buck there. 2.4M/day may be proportionally small to their net worth, but I seriously doubt anyone in that company would be 'ok' with pissing away over 10M USD/week and just write it off as a cost of doing business. I'm sure MS would rather that $2M be in their account, than the EU's.
I really don't care if MS makes a million per xbox sold. This isn't about that, it's about criminalizing people who copy in the information age.
So it's OK that a store was giving away free copies of games on modded XBoxes that they were selling? Do you also think it should be legal to mod your XBox, stick a 200GB HDD in it, grab a subscription to gamefly or some such company, and copy hundreds of games to your HDD?
You do realize, don't you, that if everybody's stealing games the GAME companies don't get paid and go under, and we end up with no games right? This doesn't really have anything to do with MS. I think it should be legal to mod an XBox, afterall, it's your hardware. I do not, however, think it should be -legal- to copy/buy/obtain/sell copies of games.
Sure, maybe making a copy for a buddy a'la the days of cassette tapes, 'cause after-all, he may just as easy borrow it from you, I can see how someone could twist that around to justify it as being right (although I don't agree with it, had your friend loaned it to you they wouldn't be selling a copy anyway) but a store -handing out- copies of 77 games at once to people...? That shouldn't be legal in any way at all. That's like saying that the bootleg telesync DVDs sold for $5 a piece on the sidewalk should be legal.
Hell, in your world every game store in the country should just start buying one copy of every game, and sell the copies, then everyone wins... right?
Slashdot Mirror
introduced to soon for most people to care.
I think you nailed it with that right there... A lot of people will be getting some form of HD DVD player when they buy an entire new rig, like when my parents got their 65" HD Mitsubishi, they got a nice amp that came with it, a nice dvd player (valued at something like 300 at the time?) and nice speakers, etc... but they got what the TV place gave them with it.. [not that my parents are dumb on the subject, dad's educated on the subject and replaced the pieces that were substandard] but the thing is, adoption may also be decided partially by what the salesman says goes well with the TV you just bought.. or based on the type of HD DVD that store decides to carry, if not both.
It'd be an interesting experiment to check out a BestBuy or someplace that is selling both players and both movies right now and see what kind of sales push you get.. now that I think about it, those store salespeople have an awful lot of power when it comes to deciding the fate of the 2 competing HD DVD standards.
I myself, and pretty much everyone I know though, are sticking with DVD... (for reasons other than financial, heh.)
So now, let's see -- for the hundreds of CDs that I have, I would have to make a playlist for all the artists. That's time spent making over a hundred playlists from data that I *already* have organized in a folder format.
I've copied all of my CDs to iTunes.. When it was importing them it grabbed the CD info from CDDB and filled out all of my ID3 tags correctly, sometimes I disagree with the genre it selects, but it gets the artist/album/tracks right....
Now, try dragging and dropping a few hundred tracks called Track XYZ and watch iTunes sort it. Oh yeah, brilliant. The damn thing does not even fetch data from a CDDB to get names of CDs, sheesh.
It works great if your ID3 tags are all set up correctly.. It was a bit tedious for me at first when I got started to get my tags all organized, but now I can find anything I want, quickly.. And it does grab CD names and information from CDDB.. well, it does for me at least...
Althought it all boils down to personal preference -- I don't like laptops with 2 mouse buttons. After using my powerbook(s) for the past 7 years or so, I may have grown biased, but I am truly more comfortable using ctrl+click for a 'right click' than I am with a dual button trackpad on a laptop. I generally don't use right click nearly as much as left click, so I don't really need the right click button out there. When I need to right click, my hands are always on the keyboard anyway, ctrl isn't that hard to reach, and IMO, more comfortable and convenient than having to pay attention to which mouse button I'm hitting. Especially when I don't usually need a "right" button..
No more or less stupid than gladiator combat, boxing, or martial arts except in this case it's satire. It's a look at how a computer generated culture views the macro-universe. Yes... it's stupid... that's the point... life is a series of conflict and resolutions no better than tossing around DayGlo Frisbees.
;D
Plus it brought us Deadly Discs of Tron in the arcade, which was great fun!
Tron was so cutting edge that a lot of people did not like it. I have always liked the film and I really wish Disney would reshoot the film using the CGI of today. Maybe a Tron version II.
... not normal, you get upgraded to a point release with experience, and with each release you get to upgrade yourself, upgrade weapons, all kinds of stuff, while traveling throughout the network fighting viruses and malware in PCs, PDAs, mainframes, etc etc.. That's part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was the creativity, which more than makes up for the awkwardness of the control, either way, for 15 bucks it's a good deal IMO.
If you're into gaming you might want to check out Tron 2.0. It can be found at pretty much any used game store for 10 or 15 bucks nowdays. It's an FPS and not really
For that matter...what would stop the community from hacking a Tivo box to use the service that something like Myth uses, Zap2It? Or...could some enterprising person sell tivo guide service on their own? What would be stopping that?
I don't have the link onhand, but someone sent me a link to do just that a while back... There's all kinds of hacks for it, I'm sure you'll be able to get it to do whatever you want..
How exactly are they making it more difficult to avoid commercials? I still fast forward through them just like before. The only change I've noticed is more commercials support Tivo's "press thumbs up for more info" thing if you do watch them.
Although I'll probably be outcast for this opinion, but I kinda like that more commercials are supporting the thumbs up button. Especially when you can schedule a recording of a show based on the commercial for that show playing, without jumping through any hoops or even needing to stop watching what you were watching by being moved to the TiVo menu to schedule said recording.. pretty convenient. I think that's only available in 'live tv' mode though, can't confirm, because I also usually blast through commercials still.
Now, of course, there's absolutely no reason not to prohibit having ringers on, and people whose ringers go off or who answer the phone and start talking in the middle of the theater should be thrown out and possibly barred in the future.
You know what I'd like to see in a feature, is the ability to shut off the phone, and still keep the SMS/paging features of it. Sometimes I just don't want to be disturbed by a phone call, but would like to have my phone in a 'pager mode' so that I can still get server notifications and such, things like that.. Have people go straight to voice mail, but alert me with a quiet beep or vibration that someone had left a message after they call, then I can call them back at my leisure, or earliest convenience... or immediately, depending on the nature of the message, either way I could avoid disturbing other people with -my- issues.
I hate the argument that people are being prevented from contacting anyone as if before cellphones everyone trapped in a burning building was destined to die there.
Case 1: If you're in a concert hall and there's armed robbers taking everyone's money, chances are they're not going to make it easy for you to make that call either, and if you manage, they're probably not going to be terribly happy with you about it.
Case 2: If you're in a burning office and the fire is keeping you from escaping you may still be able to use a land-line, afterall, you're in an office, plus i'd probably be too busy trying to find alternate ways out to be bothered with a phone call anyway...
I've stated it earlier in this thread, but I don't think it can be overstated, but I think cellphones are becoming a -ridiculous- dependancy. Do you -really- need to make/accept phone calls in a theater? or at a concert? or at dinner? or on your way to the video store? I'm on call pretty much at all times, but if I'm going to go to a movie I make sure someone's covering for me for a couple hours and shut off my phone, any calls that come in during dinner can generally wait a half hour until I leave, or 5 minutes until I can excuse myself and get away from the table.
Sure it's a minor convenience in some cases, but a lot of people take it to a point where they just become rude and/or inconsiderate. (IMO)
Cell phones have to be turned off for the duration of the flight. Nobody's yacking until you land, and then there's a veritable symphony of cell phones turning on.
Almost makes you wonder just how some people survived before the invention huh?
Not disagreeing that the iBoombox is a little... odd, but the integration with an iPod makes sense. You're not running your iPod's batteries down, and there are no extra wires hanging around. And it looks like the iBoombox does have an aux-in (minijack or SPDIF), so it would work with your digital radio receiver, CD player, 8-track, etc.
What I don't like is -- The HiFi seems to be made for home use -- If I'm at home I'd rather plug an airport express for $129 into my AV receiver and pump it through my surround system. The one upside to the HiFi is the fact that you can take it out to the pool or something, but for home use? I'd rather control it using iTunes on my powerbook through an Airport Express. Either that or hook up a mac mini to the AV receiver a'la home theater box and do it that way. Managing what I'm playing, changing songs, etc seems like it would be awkward if you're doing it on a -docked- iPod...
What I really want to know is, what genius thought it would be a good idea [...]
Actually, one thing I'm wondering, is what console makers think about this. The people responsible for Playstation, XBox, Nintendo, who actually know more about what it takes to plan/build/test/advertise/release a console. I'm sure their thoughts on the subject would be pretty interesting.
Also, when I saw this headline I was waiting for the story about DNF being delayed for some reason as well, heh.
Wait, you spend $400 for an Xbox 360 and $60 each for a few (3) games, which leaves $320. Assuming each girl gets the same amount, this means you just boinked two cheap hos.
;D
Hey one man's trash is another man's treasure I suppose
1. Street Fighter II - Did anyone *not* care about this game in 1992 or whenever that was?
;D
Hah! Picked up Hyper Fighting at an arcade auction for $200 I liked it so much. Even have a PCB for SFII:World Warriors with all the fun Guile glitches
But to jump back on topic, Anyone else remember Gorilla? that came with QBasic? Where you're a gorilla fighting another gorilla with exploding bananas using angle+velocity? Scorched Earth? Chopper Commando? Also surprised Oregon Trail hasn't been mentioned yet.
For example, how hard is it to kill the ringer after the first ring (if you must have it ring instead of vibrate in the first place)? My phone does it, and it's one of the cheap "free with a contract" phones.
Apparently some people don't know about that 'feature'. I was in a restaurant the other night and someone's phone rang, he looked at it, and then put it back in his pocket and let it ring until it went to voice mail. Ridiculous, I can't believe he would be that rude or inconsiderate (or maybe he is!) in a restaurant, I'm -hoping- it was ignorance. Maybe the sales associates should point out the more important features such as hitting the volume button to stop the ringer when you don't want to answer?
Why increase your reliance on complicated technology when you can easily get what you need without it? And furthermore, if you can't have your cell phone with you for the large part of the day, what's the point of having it in the first place? If you have a 30-minute drive to work all it means is that you get all your voicemails 30 minutes earlier than if you just had the phone at home.
Well, first off, if the phone is left in the car during the day, why does it need to be on silent? leave it audible and in the glove compartment or something, chances are when you take it out after getting into the car you're going to check the screen anyway. Plus any message that's important enough that it can't wait until you get home, could generally be called into the office and left with the receptionist, left on your voice mail, told to you directly, etc, etc... Anything else can wait.
Almost makes you wonder how some people survived before cellphones and pagers huh? Makes me miss the days of having to pull over to a pay-phone when a pager went off.
I have a treo600 now, and -wish- I could shut off the phone while keeping the SMS (for server notifications) on sometimes. Sometimes I just do not want to be disturbed at all unless it's absolutely necessary (like a server going down).. Anyone have any suggestions other than separate devices?
Internet radio doesn't work because radio doesn't work.
If radio worked Howard Stern wouldn't need to be on Sirius.
And internet radio fails because they don't/won't have Howard Stern.
At ~$30M/yr, I don't think Stern was starving, it seems to have worked well enough for him. I think Stern's move had more to do with the FCC and the fact that he was constantly running into censorship issues, understandably.
Also not to blatently plug or anything, but people keep saying that internet radio doesn't work and there's nothing good on -- If you're into Talk Radio, Stern's old station in CA (KLSX) recently went online at 971freefm.com. Pretty good stuff (I personally can't stand Corolla, but a lot of the other stuff is good if you like Talk Radio.)
Well I'd say this was the wrong decision. Aibo and Qrio are in everyone's mouth. Everyone wants one, but they are just too darn expensive.
;)
Absolutely. I've always thought these things were cool since I first heard about them about 5 years ago(?). Well, I've never had any personal experience with one of these things until visiting the local SonyStyle store. They've got an Aibo there and the thing is just too damned cool, all of the tricks it does and the things they've programmed it to do (Apparently the CSRs programmed him to bow to any Asst. Mgrs as a joke when they walk into view of the dog.) among other things I would love to get one of these things, but at $2k starting price, it's just not in the cards for me yet. Killing it off is just going to make it even harder to get if someday I -am- so inclined to get one. Or maybe it'll make it dirt cheap, let's hope for the later.
Can the feature even be turned off by those dilligent enough to do so? (Short of resorting to firewalling?)
Yup. I was able to shut it off moments after seeing it on.. I didn't even know what it was doing there, why I couldn't shut it off or that it was even watching what I was playing. I just went into options, parental controls, and shut off the music store because I don't use it anyway, if I want to buy something from the ITMS I'll just go enable it and purchase, then disable it again..
Also I saw an article today here at macosxhints.com (via slashbox) which explains how to do it too:
"Thankfully, there's an easy workaround. Kirk McElhearn used tcpdump to verify that if you simply disable the mini store (Edit: Hide Ministore, or just Shift-Command-M), then no data is transmitted. So that's the hint -- if you value the privacy of your listening habits, then hide the mini store. "
-matt
I think there's a couple thousand people who would disagree with that statement bucko. Also mention how Buckaroo Bonzai, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and Equilibrium "were horrible and everyone you ask will say the same".
;) Hell, every movie out there's got at least one person who likes it.
You're right, I don't even remember writing that and wonder why i'd put something so blatent and definite. However I can safely say that the vast majority thought it was horrible at least right?
I beg to differ. Something is lost. No one will make a proper adaptation of a video game movie when a crappy one has already been made.
First thing that came to mind for me was The Punisher (Although a comic movie, not a Game movie, but follow me here) The Dolph version of that movie was horrible and everyone you ask will say the same, the newer one that came out a couple years ago was quite a lot better. Same goes (loosly) for Batman, the first two were great, the second two were horrible, awful and should be destroyed, yet Batman Begins was totally redeeming... So they could possibly make a Bloodrayne II (or whatever flop game/comic movie) and make it better than it was before. I do agree with you though, it's hard... and you can't unsee the terrible movies that ruined the franchise in the first place. Ugh... Street Fighter....
You are correct. I have a dual optical logitech USB mouse with a little thumb button toward the bottom of the thumb resting area, that little button has become my quickest and easiest way to switch windows after assigning it to the (f9) expose' function.. Made my life a helluva lot easier. Plus both buttons and the scrollwheel (and the scroll click) all worked by default just by plugging the damned thing in. So, I've never had an issue with more than one button on my powerbook.
Who's to say they're not both right.. Maybe God was a monkey, and created us in his image from which we've evolved to what we are now! ...I'm just saaayin'
Would MS even feel a $2.4M/day pinch?
Yes
No, they won't feel it. With a multi-billion dollar / month cashflow (a major part of it being net profit) they are not going to feel a fee like this.
$2.4M/day = approx. $7.5M/month
Of course they would. Businesses don't want to move backwards at any point. They'll do whatever they can to save a buck here or a buck there. 2.4M/day may be proportionally small to their net worth, but I seriously doubt anyone in that company would be 'ok' with pissing away over 10M USD/week and just write it off as a cost of doing business. I'm sure MS would rather that $2M be in their account, than the EU's.
I really don't care if MS makes a million per xbox sold. This isn't about that, it's about criminalizing people who copy in the information age.
So it's OK that a store was giving away free copies of games on modded XBoxes that they were selling? Do you also think it should be legal to mod your XBox, stick a 200GB HDD in it, grab a subscription to gamefly or some such company, and copy hundreds of games to your HDD?
You do realize, don't you, that if everybody's stealing games the GAME companies don't get paid and go under, and we end up with no games right? This doesn't really have anything to do with MS. I think it should be legal to mod an XBox, afterall, it's your hardware. I do not, however, think it should be -legal- to copy/buy/obtain/sell copies of games.
Sure, maybe making a copy for a buddy a'la the days of cassette tapes, 'cause after-all, he may just as easy borrow it from you, I can see how someone could twist that around to justify it as being right (although I don't agree with it, had your friend loaned it to you they wouldn't be selling a copy anyway) but a store -handing out- copies of 77 games at once to people...? That shouldn't be legal in any way at all. That's like saying that the bootleg telesync DVDs sold for $5 a piece on the sidewalk should be legal.
Hell, in your world every game store in the country should just start buying one copy of every game, and sell the copies, then everyone wins... right?