The advantage of the DS as a gaming platform, is that if I lose/break my DS, I can buy a new one, and all my old games will continue to work. Or if a new model of DS comes out, I will most likely (according to past experience with Nintendo), be able to play all my old games on the new model. The same can't be said for the games. From my knowledge, when you buy a game for your iPod, it's tied to that hardware unit, and you can't transfer it to a new iPod.
They can demand all they want. Doesn't mean they will get it. Also this is yet another reason why DRM is evil. There is no money in continuing to maintain the DRM servers once you stop selling music. Once whoever you buy from decides to stop support, you are out of luck. This is the third service that I have heard of shutting down. I'm sure more will come in the future. I'm not sure how long it will take for people to realize just how bad DRM is.
The iTunes database actually has some nice features. It keeps track of what tracks I listen to most often, and which ones I don't. I can have a playlist of stuff I haven't heard lately. It keeps track of what podcasts I have listened to, and only keeps the ones I haven't heard on my iPod, so they don't take up space. It's also trivially easy using other programs to convert videos to formats my iPod can play. I don't see the need to carry FLAC files on an ipod, as it would just eat up all the space, and I don't see the advantage of OGG Vorbis over AAC, or even MP3. People give iTunes a lot of criticism. But I find that it's actually pretty good. The only audio library program I've found that I like more than iTunes is Amarok, which is better by itself, but doesn't have as good iPod integration.
I think they left out a lot when leaving out the consoles. Because other than Steam, I've never heard of any of these download services. One of them is still in Beta, and hence, didn't even get a rating. When I read the summary, I immediately thought of WiiWare/Virtual Console. It's a great service, with some really top notch games. I've heard really good stuff about XBox Live Arcade also.
It will play on your iPod. iTunes just has to detect that you plugged it into your computer, and then ask you if you want to add it to your collection, just like it does with CDs.
I agree, When they first pitched it, I was excited because they were talking about a $200 price point. That would have been possible if they kept the specs low, and stuck with Linux. However, they kept on upping the screen size, processor, and RAM. Now the higher end EEEs are almost on par with some of the regular notebooks, and the price seems to be ever increasing.
This is quite true. I heard about a recent study that showed that one of the biggest problems with the cognitive abilities of older people is the ability to ignore things they should be ignoring. This is a major problem when driving, as there's tons of things going on you should be ignoring, and if you don't ignore them, your brain gets overloaded, and you can't concentrate on the things you should be concentrating on.
I agree with you. Things are much simpler in Canada. I find it amazing that Americans actually have to wait in line to vote, for hours sometimes. Last time I went to vote, I only waited maybe 10 minutes, although that's probably an upper bound. I don't really think there was any waiting at all. The US seems like they want to make it difficult for people to vote.
My opinion exactly. Keep things as simple as possible. It takes a really long time to change 10,000 votes on paper. It can be done in.25 seconds for electronic voting.
Or to buy a house. Seriously I don't think it's really worth it to go to an expensive college. Just go to a state school, get really good marks, and learn stuff.
Because when you buy a CD, you have a physical product you can hold onto. When you buy a digital download, you don't have a physical item, so they should allow you to redownload in the case of it being lost. Assuming the download service you use doesn't have record of your purchases, how do you prove to the police/RIAA that the 15 Gigs of MP3s on your computer is stuff you bought from said music provider is actually legally yours, and not something that you just pirated.
However, the flip side of the coin is that if they don't test the knowledge of employees, how do you ensure they don't have a bunch of bumbling idiots working for them. I wouldn't work for any employer who didn't test the knowledge of their potential employees. I think the bigger problem is, is that they aren't testing the knowledge of the lawyers, accountants, HR, and sales people. I've seem plenty of people, with plenty of experience, but who couldn't actually produce any usable code. Or their previous jobs were at large firms where their jobs were so specialized, that they only had to master one little thing, and couldn't operate outside of that bubble.
Just because they throw out the original IP Address, doesn't mean they can't identify you on subsequent visits. Let's say they make a hash of your IP Address, combined with your ISP, which could be obtained based on your IP address. This would probably make the hashes mostly unique, or even completely unique if the key in the database was Hash(IPAddress), ServiceProviderID. They could throw out your IP address, and nobody would be able to figure out your IP based on their data, but they'd still be able to uniquely identify you.
Well, I don't know about the US, but in Canada, they can demand quite a bit more. Average $56,000 for 1-4 years of experience. And with the unions in place, they get quite a bit more as their seniority increases, although for some reason payscale.com blocks those numbers from public view.
Why would it simply supplement a driver? If you still have to pay some guy $60,000 a year to sit in the bus, you might as well save the money on the magnetic navigation, and just have the guy drive the bus. Using a system like this only makes sense (and cents) if you can actually remove the driver from the bus. Since you'll always need somebody on the bus (for the foreseeable future), to ensure fares are paid, and to answer the questions of riders on which route to take, and about why the guy on the back of the bus has his pet pig on the bus, and to tell the able bodied people to get out of the priority seating on the bus so the guy with the wheelchair can get on the bus, you aren't going to get much advantage from a system like this.
This is why self driven vehicles are a very very long way off. Even in the event that they bring collisions and other related problems down to 0.01% of their current rate, it still won't be good enough. When a crash happens now, it's almost always the fault of the person behind the wheel (except with mechanical failure, which is rare, and even more rare when you consider it's the fault of the driver for unmaintained vehicles). However, when cars start driving themselves, any crash will automatically be the fault of the company who designed the steering system. Any crash would probably cause a complete recall on the cars using the same system, and the company would probably go bankrupt instantly.
I have the cache, history, and cookies disabled for all sites all the time. I have all cookies deleted when I close my browser, except for a small whitelist of sites that I enable to be stored until they expire. This is good for things like my bank, which will ask extra questions beyond my password when logging into a computer without the cookie. It also works well for things like slashdot, which I want to stay permanently logged in to. I think this is probably the best configuration for most people, in terms of privacy and convenience.
You could do a cover, but it's again, not the same product. It's the same song , probably with the same notes and same words, but done by different people. Sometimes, the way people say the words makes all the difference. Sometimes, the original isn't even the best version of the song, and the cover is better. But each cover version is in fact a different song, because it is performed by different people.
Regardless of whether there's good music out there from other sources makes no difference. If you want "hot new album", the only way to get it is through paying the copyright holder, and you have to pay whatever price they demand. Sure you could go out and buy 5 * "cool new indie album" for the same price, but you still don't have "hot new album". It's like the argument with Windows and Linux. Sure Linux is free, and maybe even a better product than Windows, but it isn't windows. If you need Windows to run some application, the only way to get a copy of Windows is to pay whatever MS is asking for Windows. That's the problem with competition with copyrightable items. No two items are the same. Some may be comparable, but they aren't the same. I buy mostly independent music myself, but it's going to take a long long long time before most people in society start buying whatever sounds good, and has a good price, rather than whatever has the most marketing.
You're never going to get the same results out of 2 different computers, even if they are using the same rendering engine, or even the exact browser and OS. Monitor DPI can greatly affect the way things are displayed. Font sizes change completely especially when they are specified as points. Some users turn up the minimum font size because they can't see tiny fonts. Some monitors, especially 6 bit LCDs have really poor color rendering, and have problems with colors without much contrast. On my work monitor at work, #E7E7E7 looks exactly the same as white. There's tons of other things that the user can adjust that determine how your HTML+CSS will be displayed. If you think all the users of your site are seeing the same thing, you are quite naive. I think having different browsers is a good thing. Because it means developers at least look at the page until a few different environments. If there was only one browser, they would only check in their own browser, and assume it would look fine for everyone else. Which is definitely not the case.
Why advertise to people who are already buying your product. The people who are old and stuck in their ways wouldn't switch from Windows anyway, so there's not point in targetting them. They need to target the younger crowd, both those who have switched, so that they switch back, and those who haven't switched yet, but are getting annoyed with releases like Vista, and may switch in the next 5 years.
Slashdot Mirror
The advantage of the DS as a gaming platform, is that if I lose/break my DS, I can buy a new one, and all my old games will continue to work. Or if a new model of DS comes out, I will most likely (according to past experience with Nintendo), be able to play all my old games on the new model. The same can't be said for the games. From my knowledge, when you buy a game for your iPod, it's tied to that hardware unit, and you can't transfer it to a new iPod.
They can demand all they want. Doesn't mean they will get it. Also this is yet another reason why DRM is evil. There is no money in continuing to maintain the DRM servers once you stop selling music. Once whoever you buy from decides to stop support, you are out of luck. This is the third service that I have heard of shutting down. I'm sure more will come in the future. I'm not sure how long it will take for people to realize just how bad DRM is.
The iTunes database actually has some nice features. It keeps track of what tracks I listen to most often, and which ones I don't. I can have a playlist of stuff I haven't heard lately. It keeps track of what podcasts I have listened to, and only keeps the ones I haven't heard on my iPod, so they don't take up space. It's also trivially easy using other programs to convert videos to formats my iPod can play. I don't see the need to carry FLAC files on an ipod, as it would just eat up all the space, and I don't see the advantage of OGG Vorbis over AAC, or even MP3. People give iTunes a lot of criticism. But I find that it's actually pretty good. The only audio library program I've found that I like more than iTunes is Amarok, which is better by itself, but doesn't have as good iPod integration.
Do you sign something, or is it a click through EULA?
I think they left out a lot when leaving out the consoles. Because other than Steam, I've never heard of any of these download services. One of them is still in Beta, and hence, didn't even get a rating. When I read the summary, I immediately thought of WiiWare/Virtual Console. It's a great service, with some really top notch games. I've heard really good stuff about XBox Live Arcade also.
It will play on your iPod. iTunes just has to detect that you plugged it into your computer, and then ask you if you want to add it to your collection, just like it does with CDs.
I agree, When they first pitched it, I was excited because they were talking about a $200 price point. That would have been possible if they kept the specs low, and stuck with Linux. However, they kept on upping the screen size, processor, and RAM. Now the higher end EEEs are almost on par with some of the regular notebooks, and the price seems to be ever increasing.
This is quite true. I heard about a recent study that showed that one of the biggest problems with the cognitive abilities of older people is the ability to ignore things they should be ignoring. This is a major problem when driving, as there's tons of things going on you should be ignoring, and if you don't ignore them, your brain gets overloaded, and you can't concentrate on the things you should be concentrating on.
I agree with you. Things are much simpler in Canada. I find it amazing that Americans actually have to wait in line to vote, for hours sometimes. Last time I went to vote, I only waited maybe 10 minutes, although that's probably an upper bound. I don't really think there was any waiting at all. The US seems like they want to make it difficult for people to vote.
My opinion exactly. Keep things as simple as possible. It takes a really long time to change 10,000 votes on paper. It can be done in .25 seconds for electronic voting.
Or to buy a house. Seriously I don't think it's really worth it to go to an expensive college. Just go to a state school, get really good marks, and learn stuff.
President Bush would disagree.
Because when you buy a CD, you have a physical product you can hold onto. When you buy a digital download, you don't have a physical item, so they should allow you to redownload in the case of it being lost. Assuming the download service you use doesn't have record of your purchases, how do you prove to the police/RIAA that the 15 Gigs of MP3s on your computer is stuff you bought from said music provider is actually legally yours, and not something that you just pirated.
However, the flip side of the coin is that if they don't test the knowledge of employees, how do you ensure they don't have a bunch of bumbling idiots working for them. I wouldn't work for any employer who didn't test the knowledge of their potential employees. I think the bigger problem is, is that they aren't testing the knowledge of the lawyers, accountants, HR, and sales people. I've seem plenty of people, with plenty of experience, but who couldn't actually produce any usable code. Or their previous jobs were at large firms where their jobs were so specialized, that they only had to master one little thing, and couldn't operate outside of that bubble.
Just because they throw out the original IP Address, doesn't mean they can't identify you on subsequent visits. Let's say they make a hash of your IP Address, combined with your ISP, which could be obtained based on your IP address. This would probably make the hashes mostly unique, or even completely unique if the key in the database was Hash(IPAddress), ServiceProviderID. They could throw out your IP address, and nobody would be able to figure out your IP based on their data, but they'd still be able to uniquely identify you.
Well, I don't know about the US, but in Canada, they can demand quite a bit more. Average $56,000 for 1-4 years of experience. And with the unions in place, they get quite a bit more as their seniority increases, although for some reason payscale.com blocks those numbers from public view.
Get a pair of Myvu glasses. That way, nobody can tell what you are watching.
Why would it simply supplement a driver? If you still have to pay some guy $60,000 a year to sit in the bus, you might as well save the money on the magnetic navigation, and just have the guy drive the bus. Using a system like this only makes sense (and cents) if you can actually remove the driver from the bus. Since you'll always need somebody on the bus (for the foreseeable future), to ensure fares are paid, and to answer the questions of riders on which route to take, and about why the guy on the back of the bus has his pet pig on the bus, and to tell the able bodied people to get out of the priority seating on the bus so the guy with the wheelchair can get on the bus, you aren't going to get much advantage from a system like this.
This is why self driven vehicles are a very very long way off. Even in the event that they bring collisions and other related problems down to 0.01% of their current rate, it still won't be good enough. When a crash happens now, it's almost always the fault of the person behind the wheel (except with mechanical failure, which is rare, and even more rare when you consider it's the fault of the driver for unmaintained vehicles). However, when cars start driving themselves, any crash will automatically be the fault of the company who designed the steering system. Any crash would probably cause a complete recall on the cars using the same system, and the company would probably go bankrupt instantly.
Or living like people still live like on the other side of the world.
I have the cache, history, and cookies disabled for all sites all the time. I have all cookies deleted when I close my browser, except for a small whitelist of sites that I enable to be stored until they expire. This is good for things like my bank, which will ask extra questions beyond my password when logging into a computer without the cookie. It also works well for things like slashdot, which I want to stay permanently logged in to. I think this is probably the best configuration for most people, in terms of privacy and convenience.
You could do a cover, but it's again, not the same product. It's the same song , probably with the same notes and same words, but done by different people. Sometimes, the way people say the words makes all the difference. Sometimes, the original isn't even the best version of the song, and the cover is better. But each cover version is in fact a different song, because it is performed by different people.
Regardless of whether there's good music out there from other sources makes no difference. If you want "hot new album", the only way to get it is through paying the copyright holder, and you have to pay whatever price they demand. Sure you could go out and buy 5 * "cool new indie album" for the same price, but you still don't have "hot new album". It's like the argument with Windows and Linux. Sure Linux is free, and maybe even a better product than Windows, but it isn't windows. If you need Windows to run some application, the only way to get a copy of Windows is to pay whatever MS is asking for Windows. That's the problem with competition with copyrightable items. No two items are the same. Some may be comparable, but they aren't the same. I buy mostly independent music myself, but it's going to take a long long long time before most people in society start buying whatever sounds good, and has a good price, rather than whatever has the most marketing.
You're never going to get the same results out of 2 different computers, even if they are using the same rendering engine, or even the exact browser and OS. Monitor DPI can greatly affect the way things are displayed. Font sizes change completely especially when they are specified as points. Some users turn up the minimum font size because they can't see tiny fonts. Some monitors, especially 6 bit LCDs have really poor color rendering, and have problems with colors without much contrast. On my work monitor at work, #E7E7E7 looks exactly the same as white. There's tons of other things that the user can adjust that determine how your HTML+CSS will be displayed. If you think all the users of your site are seeing the same thing, you are quite naive. I think having different browsers is a good thing. Because it means developers at least look at the page until a few different environments. If there was only one browser, they would only check in their own browser, and assume it would look fine for everyone else. Which is definitely not the case.
Why advertise to people who are already buying your product. The people who are old and stuck in their ways wouldn't switch from Windows anyway, so there's not point in targetting them. They need to target the younger crowd, both those who have switched, so that they switch back, and those who haven't switched yet, but are getting annoyed with releases like Vista, and may switch in the next 5 years.