Sold out? ICANN never had any cred to begin with. They've *always* been in favor of big business, since that is who controls ICANN. They favor special interests over the interests of the people as a whole. They favor obliqueness and secret meetings over transparency and public discourse. No different than any other government entity, except in this case they are making money deals for themselves out in the open.
But if you're really, really, really worried about the lack of WPA support, buy the freakin' $30 USB adapter nintendo put out.
Unless you have a Mac, in which case you're out of options, since Nintendo's USB Wi-FI adapter only supports Windows. Which makes no sense to me, considering that there is a large intersection of Apple fans and Nintendo fans.
Tivo is in a world of hurt, from what I can tell. As one of the first Tivo users, my Tivo units just sit in the closet for the past few years.
TiVo is in a world of hurt, but it's not because of some groundswell of demand for IP TV. They just couldn't hold onto their market. Their software is still better than anyone else's, but that doesn't always matter (betamax). I use TiVo with DirecTV every day, and why not? It's superb at what it does. I don't watch videos on my PC; I watch them on my TV. I also have little desire to watch video on a portable format. Video podcasting would probably be the only thing worth watching in that format.
I have downloaded video content and watched it via Xbox Media Center, but you know what? It's a pain in the ass. Nothing is streamlined or automated, there's no subscription features, and you never know what quality level you'll get. So, I agree that a better content distribution network should be in place, and I should be able to download a show from any channel/country I want without having to pay some premium for a channel subscription. However, I don't think the bell tolls for TiVo because of IP TV. I think most of America wouldn't even understand what the hell you're talking about.
The basic problem is though, it seems that the movie industry has turned out to be more greedy than the record labels. They don't want to get tied into an iTunes kind of deal where they feel like they have no bargaining power. But the fracturing of video content that we're already seeing, with various movie studios making deals with different "video-on-demand" services, is going to really impede any kind of progress in the short term. Add to that the fact that IP TV would totally change the face of cable television, and I just don't see anything like what you want happening (soon). There are far more entrenched interests in the world of video than the world of records.
No, the biggest problem is the lack of a line-item veto. If we had that, none of these damaging riders would pass and we could at least have a *chance* of putting legislation into law that isn't full of pork. Of course pulling the legislators away from the corporate trough is a bit tougher.
It isn't that strange that Sean Lennon was on their second album. He often played bass for them in their early shows, along with (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion member) Russell Simmins on drums, who played on their first album.
Folders for recorded shows became available for DirecTV TiVo units a few months ago, when the big software upgrade happened. It's a really useful feature.
But yeah, there's a lot of useful things that DirecTV doesn't support, and definitely won't ever support, seeing as how they are dropping TiVo in favor of their own DVR technology.
When answering that question, one has to apply it to already-defined modes of Art.
For instance, does a nice brushstroke in a painting count as Art? No. It may be considered masterful, but it is not in itself Art. In the same way, a clever line of code is not itself Art.
So, then Art is more than the sum of its parts. While someone's code may be sublime in its composition, but it is only when you take the sum of that code (and therefore, also the execution of that code) can you determine the worth of the author's craft (his or her code).
So, I would posit that a running program may be Art (and within the evaluation of that program, the elegance of the code would certainly be noted), evaluating the code as separate from its function and place in our reality is not Art, but instead is simply a craft. Because Art is only Art when it has a relevance to humanity (or whatever species created it).
True, if you're using a bargin bin microphone, all you're going to get is high-quality garbage.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't released a GarageBand for iPod application yet. The best use for a portable device like that is not capturing studio sessions, but sketching out quick musical ideas.
All of the artwork in Spore is procedureally created and it looks quite good, so I think that type of art is one solution to the problem of exponentially-increasing costs (most of which lie within the art asset creation) of making a AAA videogame. No, you won't replicate realistic features, but it can work for stylized styles as Spore as shown.
Who's the shill? She just wants to buy music online from somewhere else other than Apple and use it on her iPod. The sad thing is you're not even being paid to toe Apple's line.
The only reason she wouldn't be able to play songs from another music store on her iPod is that they too are protected with DRM. As I said before, you can throw mp3s onto your iPod all day long, but if you have problems because your music store of choice is inhibiting your fair use rights with DRM encryption, well maybe you should find an alternate storefront from which to purchase your music. Her argument is hollow because she's arguing in defense of (DRM-protected WMA files) the very type of thing she's accusing Apple of. And the very type of thing she lobbied for when she was head of the RIAA.
So yes. She is a shill for Microsoft or whatever other outfit happens to be paying her bills at the time.
This has nothing to do with whether her assessment of Apple's DRM practices are good for customers or not. Because they aren't. But neither are Microsoft's. So let's be realistic here -- both Apple and Microsoft's bread and butter are closed systems. DRM will continue on both sides until customers rebel against it en masse, and I don't see that happening as long as there are readily available ways around it. But if you're buying from a DRM-protected online music store, you're only encouraging their behavior.
True, I had forgotten about that because I never buy from the iTunes Music Store (I believe it rips off the actual artists just as much as the RIAA). I do agree that those files should not be protected by unlockable DRM, and have said from the beginning that Apple is complicit in anti-consumer behavior regarding its Music Store. But hey, it's not like anyone is forced to use the iTunes Music Store in order to use your iPod. Apple doesn't limit you from loading on your own mp3s onto your iPod.
The biggest takeaway from her "blog" is that there is no takeaway. This is a PR piece pure and simple, and slashdot and other "news" outlets have played right into her hand (and whomever is paying her) by covering it as a real story.
Don't be so naiive. Rosen is a professional shill. She's probably getting paid by Microsoft (since she namechecks them in her post) or whomever has the lack of wisdom to hire her to spin the iPod in a bad light in favor of "open" systems.
I guess she wasn't aware of the fact that there is an option in the iTunes menu which says "Convert selection to mp3," instantly making your AAC files into cross-platform mp3s. And she probably didn't realize her statement that "even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" is invalidated by going to the Apple website and seeing that the base iPod shuffle costs $99.
Add in "too many chiefs, not enough indians" (basically, every mid-level manager and marketdroid has to get their word in and impose their will) and the end result is bloated garbage.
Don't you mean, "Too many chiefs, too many Indians?"
Actually though, I think this has more to do with a bottom-line management style with a warpspeed dev cycle, rather than a deficit in quality talent. (though is anyone really attracted to working at AOL given the crap we see come out of there?)
I imagine there is some sort of hardwired instinct at work here. I don't know the Bionicles game, but many games are so complicated now that they require complex thinking skills. There may be some internal switch which says, "I am doing this important task [e.g. hunting], so I should turn off my learning/artistic desire switch in order to focus on the task at hand."
Even games like Unreal Tournament or Grand Theft Auto require a lot of different brain processes and instincts to "survive." But these games may also draw upon our survival instincts, which tend to elevate hormone levels and whatnot. Those biochemical changes may have effects similar to a drug which last even for a few days after the game was played.
This is the stupidest "story" I've seen on slashdot. E-mail is nothing more than a front-end for a database. Certainly Google Mail uses a database to archive all of our e-mails and retrieve/sort them quickly. It's certainly a new paradigm for *accessing* the database than what we've been used to. But at the end of the day it's still just a front-end.
The most impressive Google Maps sight I've seen so far is The Boneyard, where all the retired air force planes go. This location is at Davis Monthan Air Force Base. It is nicknamed "the boneyard" for obvious reasons and also "the world's largest airforce," as it holds more military airplanes than any nation's standing airforce. It's somewhere around Tucson, Arizona. Apparently there are also guided tours you can take.
Here, here. I've been waiting years for Chris Taylor to stop f'ing around with Dungeon Siege (better than Diablo yes, but still Diablo) and get back to doing a TA sequel. Total Annihilation was a groundbreaking game, from storyline, UI (*especially* UI), graphical style, personality (which is hard to do, given a bunch of robots), and gameplay. No one has still really been able to successfully copy TA's intuitive context-sensitive UI yet. R.I.P. Cavedog.
I'm not quite sure how they plan to be like TA, but Stardock doesn't really have a history of visually-impacting games, so I wonder if they can pull something like that off. I like them as a company, and they have a successful business model for an indie game studio, so I wish them all the best in this.
If you think about, $40-50 isn't really that much money for a game you'll get countless hours of enjoyment out of.
Well that's exactly where the problem lies. You see, in general the publishers and game studios aren't being *honest* with customers about the quality of their respective titles. If they were, there would be much more granularity in the pricing structure of games. But as it is, they market every game as if it's a AAA title (even though internally they know very well which ones suck and which are mediocre), and so they have a fixed price point for every game. This leads to a situation where consumers have to wade through endless amounts of marketing BS to find the truth about a game. If they were willing to sell a mediocre console game at $25, people would be much more willing to buy it. But they aren't willing to be honest. ESPN was honest with their sports games. And then EA bought them out to shut them up.
To speak more to your point though, I believe publishers vastly underestimate how complicated consumers are in their game purchase decisions. I think for a lot of us, the "worth" of a game is determined by a mix of longevity, fun factor, and style. If this is some action game that we can blow through in 8 hours, do not expect us to throw down $50 for it. I have to give Namco props here for releasing Katamari Damarcy for $20. I think this exactly proves my point. If you nail the price point correctly, people will buy it in droves, whereas it might otherwise languish on the shelves and in three years be talked about by game journalists as a cult classic that got overlooked.
I think in the end a flexible pricing structure would serve to benefit both the publishers and the consumers. Lying to your customer base by saying every game is amazing and worth $50 only serves to piss people off, and after so much marketing shrill (and don't think I'm not also pointing the finger at you for this, IGN et al), people start to just tune you out completely. I think that is exactly what is happening with the PSP. Sony got greedy and thought people would buy a portable system as if it was a third Playstation console. But Nintendo has already set a different price expectation for consumers, and that will be very difficult to overcome.
So to borrow a note from Jon Stewart: publishers, stop hurting the game industry. Just stop. We know that next-gen games cost more to produce, but charging more money isn't necessarily the answer.
It has been many years since Lucas had any sense of perspective. Return of the Jedi was arguably his first steps in his long journey towards Craptown, Oblivia where he has decided to take up permanent residence.
If Lucas really wanted to win back the fans, he wouldn't have propagated new and existing defacements of the original trilogy, such as not returning the Greedo scene to the original narrative, or replacing Darth Vader in the Return of the Jedi celebration scene with that mullet-wearing, no-talent hack for the sake of "continuity." No, George will make the films he wants to make, regardless of the opinions of the public at large, which is in of itself a noble thing in filmmaking. But apparently no one close to him wishes to risk telling Lucas that he has no clothes.
I would reserve those comments until Flash 8 comes out sometime this year. Macromedia is serious about getting away from the "scripting" moniker and on to something more robust. I can't say much more than that except that the linguistic differences between Java and Flash are going to be much smaller.
Tivo has a patent on their Season Pass feature, which is to me the feature that sets them apart from every other generic DVR. It allows you to easily set up the Tivo to record episodes of shows you specify, and does a great job of making sure there's no conflicts between different show schedules, as well as not recording repeat episodes. So unless they license the technology from Tivo, I'm not sure how that feature will be on the DirecTV DVR. It will just be another generic DVR. Which is frustrating to me because I'm a DirecTV subscriber and I don't want to lose Tivo support (and no way in hell am I going back to cable).
Slashdot Mirror
Sold out? ICANN never had any cred to begin with. They've *always* been in favor of big business, since that is who controls ICANN. They favor special interests over the interests of the people as a whole. They favor obliqueness and secret meetings over transparency and public discourse. No different than any other government entity, except in this case they are making money deals for themselves out in the open.
But if you're really, really, really worried about the lack of WPA support, buy the freakin' $30 USB adapter nintendo put out.
Unless you have a Mac, in which case you're out of options, since Nintendo's USB Wi-FI adapter only supports Windows. Which makes no sense to me, considering that there is a large intersection of Apple fans and Nintendo fans.
True, there is some censorship going on, however it doesn't seem that either Google's software or the Great Firewall is completely effective. Googling for "tiananmen square massacre" results in a lot of hits, whereas you would think it would return nothing:a ssacre&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&hl=zh-CN
http://www.google.cn/search?q=tiananmen+Square++m
Tivo is in a world of hurt, from what I can tell. As one of the first Tivo users, my Tivo units just sit in the closet for the past few years.
TiVo is in a world of hurt, but it's not because of some groundswell of demand for IP TV. They just couldn't hold onto their market. Their software is still better than anyone else's, but that doesn't always matter (betamax). I use TiVo with DirecTV every day, and why not? It's superb at what it does. I don't watch videos on my PC; I watch them on my TV. I also have little desire to watch video on a portable format. Video podcasting would probably be the only thing worth watching in that format.
I have downloaded video content and watched it via Xbox Media Center, but you know what? It's a pain in the ass. Nothing is streamlined or automated, there's no subscription features, and you never know what quality level you'll get. So, I agree that a better content distribution network should be in place, and I should be able to download a show from any channel/country I want without having to pay some premium for a channel subscription. However, I don't think the bell tolls for TiVo because of IP TV. I think most of America wouldn't even understand what the hell you're talking about.
The basic problem is though, it seems that the movie industry has turned out to be more greedy than the record labels. They don't want to get tied into an iTunes kind of deal where they feel like they have no bargaining power. But the fracturing of video content that we're already seeing, with various movie studios making deals with different "video-on-demand" services, is going to really impede any kind of progress in the short term. Add to that the fact that IP TV would totally change the face of cable television, and I just don't see anything like what you want happening (soon). There are far more entrenched interests in the world of video than the world of records.
No, the biggest problem is the lack of a line-item veto. If we had that, none of these damaging riders would pass and we could at least have a *chance* of putting legislation into law that isn't full of pork. Of course pulling the legislators away from the corporate trough is a bit tougher.
Moogs never used MIDI until recent revisions, you insensitive clod. They were pure analog devices.
It isn't that strange that Sean Lennon was on their second album. He often played bass for them in their early shows, along with (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion member) Russell Simmins on drums, who played on their first album.
Folders for recorded shows became available for DirecTV TiVo units a few months ago, when the big software upgrade happened. It's a really useful feature.
But yeah, there's a lot of useful things that DirecTV doesn't support, and definitely won't ever support, seeing as how they are dropping TiVo in favor of their own DVR technology.
When answering that question, one has to apply it to already-defined modes of Art.
For instance, does a nice brushstroke in a painting count as Art? No. It may be considered masterful, but it is not in itself Art. In the same way, a clever line of code is not itself Art.
So, then Art is more than the sum of its parts. While someone's code may be sublime in its composition, but it is only when you take the sum of that code (and therefore, also the execution of that code) can you determine the worth of the author's craft (his or her code).
So, I would posit that a running program may be Art (and within the evaluation of that program, the elegance of the code would certainly be noted), evaluating the code as separate from its function and place in our reality is not Art, but instead is simply a craft. Because Art is only Art when it has a relevance to humanity (or whatever species created it).
True, if you're using a bargin bin microphone, all you're going to get is high-quality garbage.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't released a GarageBand for iPod application yet. The best use for a portable device like that is not capturing studio sessions, but sketching out quick musical ideas.
All of the artwork in Spore is procedureally created and it looks quite good, so I think that type of art is one solution to the problem of exponentially-increasing costs (most of which lie within the art asset creation) of making a AAA videogame. No, you won't replicate realistic features, but it can work for stylized styles as Spore as shown.
Punny stuff! Oh how I wish I had modpoints right now.
Who's the shill? She just wants to buy music online from somewhere else other than Apple and use it on her iPod. The sad thing is you're not even being paid to toe Apple's line.
The only reason she wouldn't be able to play songs from another music store on her iPod is that they too are protected with DRM. As I said before, you can throw mp3s onto your iPod all day long, but if you have problems because your music store of choice is inhibiting your fair use rights with DRM encryption, well maybe you should find an alternate storefront from which to purchase your music. Her argument is hollow because she's arguing in defense of (DRM-protected WMA files) the very type of thing she's accusing Apple of. And the very type of thing she lobbied for when she was head of the RIAA.
So yes. She is a shill for Microsoft or whatever other outfit happens to be paying her bills at the time.
This has nothing to do with whether her assessment of Apple's DRM practices are good for customers or not. Because they aren't. But neither are Microsoft's. So let's be realistic here -- both Apple and Microsoft's bread and butter are closed systems. DRM will continue on both sides until customers rebel against it en masse, and I don't see that happening as long as there are readily available ways around it. But if you're buying from a DRM-protected online music store, you're only encouraging their behavior.
True, I had forgotten about that because I never buy from the iTunes Music Store (I believe it rips off the actual artists just as much as the RIAA). I do agree that those files should not be protected by unlockable DRM, and have said from the beginning that Apple is complicit in anti-consumer behavior regarding its Music Store. But hey, it's not like anyone is forced to use the iTunes Music Store in order to use your iPod. Apple doesn't limit you from loading on your own mp3s onto your iPod.
The biggest takeaway from her "blog" is that there is no takeaway. This is a PR piece pure and simple, and slashdot and other "news" outlets have played right into her hand (and whomever is paying her) by covering it as a real story.
Don't be so naiive. Rosen is a professional shill. She's probably getting paid by Microsoft (since she namechecks them in her post) or whomever has the lack of wisdom to hire her to spin the iPod in a bad light in favor of "open" systems.
I guess she wasn't aware of the fact that there is an option in the iTunes menu which says "Convert selection to mp3," instantly making your AAC files into cross-platform mp3s. And she probably didn't realize her statement that "even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars" is invalidated by going to the Apple website and seeing that the base iPod shuffle costs $99.
Everyone has known it was going to be called Tiger for the last YEAR. Why do they wait until release day to file a lawsuit?
My personal tinfoil theory is that Microsoft slipped TigerDirect a generous amount of money to try to sabotage Apple's launch.
Add in "too many chiefs, not enough indians" (basically, every mid-level manager and marketdroid has to get their word in and impose their will) and the end result is bloated garbage.
Don't you mean, "Too many chiefs, too many Indians?"
Actually though, I think this has more to do with a bottom-line management style with a warpspeed dev cycle, rather than a deficit in quality talent. (though is anyone really attracted to working at AOL given the crap we see come out of there?)
I imagine there is some sort of hardwired instinct at work here. I don't know the Bionicles game, but many games are so complicated now that they require complex thinking skills. There may be some internal switch which says, "I am doing this important task [e.g. hunting], so I should turn off my learning/artistic desire switch in order to focus on the task at hand."
Even games like Unreal Tournament or Grand Theft Auto require a lot of different brain processes and instincts to "survive." But these games may also draw upon our survival instincts, which tend to elevate hormone levels and whatnot. Those biochemical changes may have effects similar to a drug which last even for a few days after the game was played.
This is the stupidest "story" I've seen on slashdot. E-mail is nothing more than a front-end for a database. Certainly Google Mail uses a database to archive all of our e-mails and retrieve/sort them quickly. It's certainly a new paradigm for *accessing* the database than what we've been used to. But at the end of the day it's still just a front-end.
The most impressive Google Maps sight I've seen so far is The Boneyard, where all the retired air force planes go. This location is at Davis Monthan Air Force Base. It is nicknamed "the boneyard" for obvious reasons and also "the world's largest airforce," as it holds more military airplanes than any nation's standing airforce. It's somewhere around Tucson, Arizona. Apparently there are also guided tours you can take.
Here, here. I've been waiting years for Chris Taylor to stop f'ing around with Dungeon Siege (better than Diablo yes, but still Diablo) and get back to doing a TA sequel. Total Annihilation was a groundbreaking game, from storyline, UI (*especially* UI), graphical style, personality (which is hard to do, given a bunch of robots), and gameplay. No one has still really been able to successfully copy TA's intuitive context-sensitive UI yet. R.I.P. Cavedog. I'm not quite sure how they plan to be like TA, but Stardock doesn't really have a history of visually-impacting games, so I wonder if they can pull something like that off. I like them as a company, and they have a successful business model for an indie game studio, so I wish them all the best in this.
If you think about, $40-50 isn't really that much money for a game you'll get countless hours of enjoyment out of.
Well that's exactly where the problem lies. You see, in general the publishers and game studios aren't being *honest* with customers about the quality of their respective titles. If they were, there would be much more granularity in the pricing structure of games. But as it is, they market every game as if it's a AAA title (even though internally they know very well which ones suck and which are mediocre), and so they have a fixed price point for every game. This leads to a situation where consumers have to wade through endless amounts of marketing BS to find the truth about a game. If they were willing to sell a mediocre console game at $25, people would be much more willing to buy it. But they aren't willing to be honest. ESPN was honest with their sports games. And then EA bought them out to shut them up.
To speak more to your point though, I believe publishers vastly underestimate how complicated consumers are in their game purchase decisions. I think for a lot of us, the "worth" of a game is determined by a mix of longevity, fun factor, and style. If this is some action game that we can blow through in 8 hours, do not expect us to throw down $50 for it. I have to give Namco props here for releasing Katamari Damarcy for $20. I think this exactly proves my point. If you nail the price point correctly, people will buy it in droves, whereas it might otherwise languish on the shelves and in three years be talked about by game journalists as a cult classic that got overlooked.
I think in the end a flexible pricing structure would serve to benefit both the publishers and the consumers. Lying to your customer base by saying every game is amazing and worth $50 only serves to piss people off, and after so much marketing shrill (and don't think I'm not also pointing the finger at you for this, IGN et al), people start to just tune you out completely. I think that is exactly what is happening with the PSP. Sony got greedy and thought people would buy a portable system as if it was a third Playstation console. But Nintendo has already set a different price expectation for consumers, and that will be very difficult to overcome.
So to borrow a note from Jon Stewart: publishers, stop hurting the game industry. Just stop. We know that next-gen games cost more to produce, but charging more money isn't necessarily the answer.
It has been many years since Lucas had any sense of perspective. Return of the Jedi was arguably his first steps in his long journey towards Craptown, Oblivia where he has decided to take up permanent residence.
If Lucas really wanted to win back the fans, he wouldn't have propagated new and existing defacements of the original trilogy, such as not returning the Greedo scene to the original narrative, or replacing Darth Vader in the Return of the Jedi celebration scene with that mullet-wearing, no-talent hack for the sake of "continuity." No, George will make the films he wants to make, regardless of the opinions of the public at large, which is in of itself a noble thing in filmmaking. But apparently no one close to him wishes to risk telling Lucas that he has no clothes.
I would reserve those comments until Flash 8 comes out sometime this year. Macromedia is serious about getting away from the "scripting" moniker and on to something more robust. I can't say much more than that except that the linguistic differences between Java and Flash are going to be much smaller.
Tivo has a patent on their Season Pass feature, which is to me the feature that sets them apart from every other generic DVR. It allows you to easily set up the Tivo to record episodes of shows you specify, and does a great job of making sure there's no conflicts between different show schedules, as well as not recording repeat episodes. So unless they license the technology from Tivo, I'm not sure how that feature will be on the DirecTV DVR. It will just be another generic DVR. Which is frustrating to me because I'm a DirecTV subscriber and I don't want to lose Tivo support (and no way in hell am I going back to cable).