I'm not sure if that would work, because the limitations were clearly spelled out in the EULA you agreed to when you installed iTunes.
Without getting in to the legitimacy of a click-through license, "hidden" DRM on physical media is more vulnerable to the legal approach because you never agreed to anything, you just handed over cash and recieved a disc.
That's a good choice. I have a X1 that I got off eBay for cheap and it's great. It's the main TV in my dorm room, shared between 6 people, and we've put around 2000 hours on it since August. Supposedly the bulbs are rated for 2500-4000, so we'll see when it blows.
Well the issue is that MMOs cost money to run. The way I understand the Live architecture is that for all games that are on Live proper, Microsoft hosts everything needed on their servers. MMOs are hosted seperately by the MMO developer for obvious reasons, and only access the Live servers for authentication. In this way, they are almost entirely independent from Live and thus use their own pricing structure.
Taking the fees out of the gold pass costs doesn't work, because it would eventually lead to a situation where MS isn't getting any money out of the deal if a player had a lot of MMOs.
I think the best way to have it make sense is to look at Live like you'd look at your broadband connection. It's a flat rate you pay to play games. On top of that, you can pay a bit more to play certain games, only in this case you don't need to be paying the first charge if you only want to play the extra cost games.
What I would like to see is a no-initial-investment MMO. If I'm going to be paying $X a month, why the hell should I pay $50-60 up front as well? Why can't I just download the game client, give them my credit card info, and go?
Seeing that sunlight has been proven to cause cancer where EM radiation from cell phones/wifi/whatever has not, I'd say that yes, visible light is more dangerous.
Yes, I know that I'm completely ignoring the fact that sunlight is many orders of magnitude more powerful.
I used to have one of those. Did they ever update it to be able to work on the screen from NT? Last time I used one, it needed a serial port adapter for NT/2K/XP systems and even required a TSR to work on my Rage 128 in Windows 98....Timex tech support said the video card was "too fast".
Yea, I'm pretty sure that the majority of Ohio is part of the world too...
Outside of the large cities the GSM service is hit-or-miss unless you're on I-80, I-75, or a small number of other major highways...
CDMA is a bit better, but I have had Verizon, Cingular, and T-Mobile all running in my car and still had about 30 minutes of the drive back home from Toledo where I'm in a total dead spot.
IIRC, the Civic hybrid is faster than a regular Civic (not that it was a challenge) because of the off the line torque of the electric complementing the higher-revving nature of the gas motor.
Weak and sluggish could be applied to the NA versions, if you're used to the torque curve of a larger engine. The wankels need some revving to get in to the power, so until one gets used to that it could feel slow compared to a traditional V8 sports car.
As for loud, well that varies based on your exhaust and again if there's a turbo. Personally I love the sound of a wankel, so I wouldn't complain about them being loud, but I'm sure some would find them annoying.
I wish local shops were an option. For most major parts, I can get overnight shipping with priority service from Newegg and have enough money left over to buy lunch compared to the cost at a local shop. An example is today I bought a 3800+ AMD dual core processor. Both of the local stores had it for $399, NewEgg had it for under $300, so I got a new tube of Arctic Silver 5, a massive heatsink, and overnight shipping along with it for less than it would have cost locally before tax.
Now I'll shop at the local stores when the price is close (within $10-20) because overnight shipping still means tomorrow at best, where local purchase means right now, but if I can get a good bottle of liquor with the money I save, fuck the locals, I'm buying online.
Are you ordering the wrong part enough that restocking fees are a major issue? Seriously, the only time you should be returning something is when it's damaged, otherwise it's your fault and the company is free to charge a restocking fee.
As for returns, just call them up and bitch, you'll get the return shipping credited to your account. Most motherboards have a note on them saying they're warranted through the manufacturer only, but I've still had them accept returns on two defective boards and even immediately ship out the replacement before I had shipped the bad board back (granted, they had my credit card number already, so it wasn't a real risk to them).
As an internet business, doing real phone support costs them enough that they will generally do anything within reason to get you to stop calling them, which generally means agreeing to your demands of a return equivalent to at a B&M store.
Well, their IT computing section has plenty of details on the entire Anandtech architecture, from hardware to software, so you check it out and take a guess how well it will handle the load.....
Anandtech is quite large, so I'm sure they can take the Slashdot load just fine.
No shit. I had 1680x1050 on a 15" Compaq 2 years ago, and a friend of mine had 1920x1200 on a 15" Dell. Apple needs to get with the program and give laptop users better resolutions. I love my Powerbook G4, but 1280x854 is limiting. If a 1920x1200 15" model comes out, or even 1680x1050, I'll buy it in a second, to hell with my credit. No way I'm carrying around a 17" machine just to get a reasonable resolution.
If they also bring along an nVidia graphics chipset with at least 256MB of RAM, I won't be able to get my mastercard out fast enough. I used to be an ATI fanboy, but the whole Linux driver thing has me turned off to them for a while, and I hate the Catalyst Control Center. I shouldn't need to install.Net just to set up my graphics card.
Obviously neither of those are issues on OS X, but being an Intel platform I expect it to be capable of triple-booting within the next 6 months.
and everywhere else. NetBurst is dead and the P6-based Pentium M/Core/Core Duo design is going to be used in desktops and servers in the near future. The Pentium name is also just as dead.
NetBurst has been flawed from the beginning (remember back when it came out and clock-for-clock P3s were beating it?) but until consumers began to understand that clock speed isn't everything it was a marketing victory.
I'm sure it's Gamestop. They seemed to be actually repairing/refurbishing the NES units in-store because the first time I went there they had one NES cracked open on the counter and a soldering iron was out. The sale units are basically a console, controller, and light gun vacuum-sealed in plastic, so I wonder if it might be just a choice of the management at this particular store.
Odd, the Gamestop near my house is the only place locally that I can buy an NES and games. I'm not sure about their PS1 selection because I've really never cared for much on PlayStation 1 or 2, but they do carry plenty of old cartridge games still, so I wouldn't expect games for newer consoles like PS1 to be cut out.
Obviously you don't know how consoles work. The manufacturer takes a hit on each one sold and makes it up on game licensing. Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo all end up getting between 25 and 50% of the profit from the sale of a game.
Even right now, near the end of their life cycles, the 2000-2001 generation of consoles still cost $200-300 a piece to produce, meaning they have to sell 4-6 games, or preferably the ever-profitable accessories to turn a profit. Microsoft's Xbox division is quite a few million in the hole right now because the Xbox has always been the most expensive to produce of its generation, and they did not sell enough games to cover the expense. Too many people bought Xboxes just for one or two games, or bought used games, or something. I think Nintendo's the only one who actually managed to turn a profit, Sony and Microsoft just look at this as an advertising expense. It gets them mindshare and gets their devices in to people's homes. The computer market is firmly in Microsoft's grasp, so right now the competition is over the living room.
Well if you already have a high end gaming PC, then consoles really don't make sense if you want the games that are available across both platforms. On the other hand, if your PC is a few years old, $400 or so to play CoD2, Quake 4, ES4: Oblivion, and many other games at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 at a decent framerate is cheaper than a new video card, more RAM, and potentially a new CPU (maybe with a new motherboard).
Thanks to the PCI Express transition, upgrading an older PC to play modern games almost requires rebuilding the machine, since it's pointless to invest in a high-end video card that's tethered to a dying slot.
If Sony isn't selling the PS3 at a loss and it does actually meet the published specs, it'll be near $1000. No way they're going to be able to charge that much for a console, so I'm positive it will be sold for a loss an subsidized by game sales, just like before.
Other Xbox games did it first, PGR2 for example got MS $10 from me buying the two new tracks + vehicle packs back before Halo 2 existed. A few others had freely downloadable maps that kept people playing, and were still in a way paid for by the Live subscriptions we had to be able to download these.
I'm sure the other guys wanted to do it too, they just lacked the necessary hardware. I said it after getting my Xbox back in 2001, and I'm saying it again now: Hard drives and online capability are requirements for decent modern gaming. I'm disappointed in MS for making the hard drive optional this time around, and also in Sony for still doing the same. Nintendo is going to be the only one to have storage built in to the system straight from the factory, and IIRC it will take standard flash memory for expansion (something that should have been done long ago, screw these damn proprietary memory cards).
It works with quite a few monitors actually. At a LAN party a while back I hooked up 6 Xboxes on 5 TVs. The front screen had a second machine running rear view in PIP and there were two off to each side. We were trying to get a 7th box in there to run a spectator-cam view, but we ran out of copies of the game (3 legit copies, only 3 modchipped xboxes, so only 6 could run it).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure if that would work, because the limitations were clearly spelled out in the EULA you agreed to when you installed iTunes.
Without getting in to the legitimacy of a click-through license, "hidden" DRM on physical media is more vulnerable to the legal approach because you never agreed to anything, you just handed over cash and recieved a disc.
That's a good choice. I have a X1 that I got off eBay for cheap and it's great. It's the main TV in my dorm room, shared between 6 people, and we've put around 2000 hours on it since August. Supposedly the bulbs are rated for 2500-4000, so we'll see when it blows.
Well the issue is that MMOs cost money to run. The way I understand the Live architecture is that for all games that are on Live proper, Microsoft hosts everything needed on their servers. MMOs are hosted seperately by the MMO developer for obvious reasons, and only access the Live servers for authentication. In this way, they are almost entirely independent from Live and thus use their own pricing structure.
Taking the fees out of the gold pass costs doesn't work, because it would eventually lead to a situation where MS isn't getting any money out of the deal if a player had a lot of MMOs.
I think the best way to have it make sense is to look at Live like you'd look at your broadband connection. It's a flat rate you pay to play games. On top of that, you can pay a bit more to play certain games, only in this case you don't need to be paying the first charge if you only want to play the extra cost games.
What I would like to see is a no-initial-investment MMO. If I'm going to be paying $X a month, why the hell should I pay $50-60 up front as well? Why can't I just download the game client, give them my credit card info, and go?
Seeing that sunlight has been proven to cause cancer where EM radiation from cell phones/wifi/whatever has not, I'd say that yes, visible light is more dangerous.
Yes, I know that I'm completely ignoring the fact that sunlight is many orders of magnitude more powerful.
Yea, good point....I've only got LCDs and DLPs now, so I guess I'd need the adapter anyways....
I used to have one of those. Did they ever update it to be able to work on the screen from NT? Last time I used one, it needed a serial port adapter for NT/2K/XP systems and even required a TSR to work on my Rage 128 in Windows 98....Timex tech support said the video card was "too fast".
Yea, I'm pretty sure that the majority of Ohio is part of the world too...
Outside of the large cities the GSM service is hit-or-miss unless you're on I-80, I-75, or a small number of other major highways...
CDMA is a bit better, but I have had Verizon, Cingular, and T-Mobile all running in my car and still had about 30 minutes of the drive back home from Toledo where I'm in a total dead spot.
Well one is a subset of the other.
We're all law breakers (at least anyone who's ever driven a car...) but very few are child pornographers.
IIRC, the Civic hybrid is faster than a regular Civic (not that it was a challenge) because of the off the line torque of the electric complementing the higher-revving nature of the gas motor.
Weak and sluggish could be applied to the NA versions, if you're used to the torque curve of a larger engine. The wankels need some revving to get in to the power, so until one gets used to that it could feel slow compared to a traditional V8 sports car.
As for loud, well that varies based on your exhaust and again if there's a turbo. Personally I love the sound of a wankel, so I wouldn't complain about them being loud, but I'm sure some would find them annoying.
I wish local shops were an option. For most major parts, I can get overnight shipping with priority service from Newegg and have enough money left over to buy lunch compared to the cost at a local shop. An example is today I bought a 3800+ AMD dual core processor. Both of the local stores had it for $399, NewEgg had it for under $300, so I got a new tube of Arctic Silver 5, a massive heatsink, and overnight shipping along with it for less than it would have cost locally before tax.
Now I'll shop at the local stores when the price is close (within $10-20) because overnight shipping still means tomorrow at best, where local purchase means right now, but if I can get a good bottle of liquor with the money I save, fuck the locals, I'm buying online.
I thought Egghead had become NewEgg, but after a quick googling, it seems Egghead became part of Amazon and NewEgg is unrelated.
Are you ordering the wrong part enough that restocking fees are a major issue? Seriously, the only time you should be returning something is when it's damaged, otherwise it's your fault and the company is free to charge a restocking fee.
As for returns, just call them up and bitch, you'll get the return shipping credited to your account. Most motherboards have a note on them saying they're warranted through the manufacturer only, but I've still had them accept returns on two defective boards and even immediately ship out the replacement before I had shipped the bad board back (granted, they had my credit card number already, so it wasn't a real risk to them).
As an internet business, doing real phone support costs them enough that they will generally do anything within reason to get you to stop calling them, which generally means agreeing to your demands of a return equivalent to at a B&M store.
Well, their IT computing section has plenty of details on the entire Anandtech architecture, from hardware to software, so you check it out and take a guess how well it will handle the load.....
Anandtech is quite large, so I'm sure they can take the Slashdot load just fine.
If they still work, I'll take a few....
I've always wanted to screw around with them.
No shit. I had 1680x1050 on a 15" Compaq 2 years ago, and a friend of mine had 1920x1200 on a 15" Dell. Apple needs to get with the program and give laptop users better resolutions. I love my Powerbook G4, but 1280x854 is limiting. If a 1920x1200 15" model comes out, or even 1680x1050, I'll buy it in a second, to hell with my credit. No way I'm carrying around a 17" machine just to get a reasonable resolution.
.Net just to set up my graphics card.
If they also bring along an nVidia graphics chipset with at least 256MB of RAM, I won't be able to get my mastercard out fast enough. I used to be an ATI fanboy, but the whole Linux driver thing has me turned off to them for a while, and I hate the Catalyst Control Center. I shouldn't need to install
Obviously neither of those are issues on OS X, but being an Intel platform I expect it to be capable of triple-booting within the next 6 months.
and everywhere else. NetBurst is dead and the P6-based Pentium M/Core/Core Duo design is going to be used in desktops and servers in the near future. The Pentium name is also just as dead.
NetBurst has been flawed from the beginning (remember back when it came out and clock-for-clock P3s were beating it?) but until consumers began to understand that clock speed isn't everything it was a marketing victory.
That might make sense if Valve had decided the name of Counter-Strike, but they had nothing to do with it until well after it became popular.
I'm sure it's Gamestop. They seemed to be actually repairing/refurbishing the NES units in-store because the first time I went there they had one NES cracked open on the counter and a soldering iron was out. The sale units are basically a console, controller, and light gun vacuum-sealed in plastic, so I wonder if it might be just a choice of the management at this particular store.
Odd, the Gamestop near my house is the only place locally that I can buy an NES and games. I'm not sure about their PS1 selection because I've really never cared for much on PlayStation 1 or 2, but they do carry plenty of old cartridge games still, so I wouldn't expect games for newer consoles like PS1 to be cut out.
Obviously you don't know how consoles work. The manufacturer takes a hit on each one sold and makes it up on game licensing. Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo all end up getting between 25 and 50% of the profit from the sale of a game.
Even right now, near the end of their life cycles, the 2000-2001 generation of consoles still cost $200-300 a piece to produce, meaning they have to sell 4-6 games, or preferably the ever-profitable accessories to turn a profit. Microsoft's Xbox division is quite a few million in the hole right now because the Xbox has always been the most expensive to produce of its generation, and they did not sell enough games to cover the expense. Too many people bought Xboxes just for one or two games, or bought used games, or something. I think Nintendo's the only one who actually managed to turn a profit, Sony and Microsoft just look at this as an advertising expense. It gets them mindshare and gets their devices in to people's homes. The computer market is firmly in Microsoft's grasp, so right now the competition is over the living room.
Well if you already have a high end gaming PC, then consoles really don't make sense if you want the games that are available across both platforms. On the other hand, if your PC is a few years old, $400 or so to play CoD2, Quake 4, ES4: Oblivion, and many other games at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 at a decent framerate is cheaper than a new video card, more RAM, and potentially a new CPU (maybe with a new motherboard).
Thanks to the PCI Express transition, upgrading an older PC to play modern games almost requires rebuilding the machine, since it's pointless to invest in a high-end video card that's tethered to a dying slot.
If Sony isn't selling the PS3 at a loss and it does actually meet the published specs, it'll be near $1000. No way they're going to be able to charge that much for a console, so I'm positive it will be sold for a loss an subsidized by game sales, just like before.
Other Xbox games did it first, PGR2 for example got MS $10 from me buying the two new tracks + vehicle packs back before Halo 2 existed. A few others had freely downloadable maps that kept people playing, and were still in a way paid for by the Live subscriptions we had to be able to download these.
I'm sure the other guys wanted to do it too, they just lacked the necessary hardware. I said it after getting my Xbox back in 2001, and I'm saying it again now: Hard drives and online capability are requirements for decent modern gaming. I'm disappointed in MS for making the hard drive optional this time around, and also in Sony for still doing the same. Nintendo is going to be the only one to have storage built in to the system straight from the factory, and IIRC it will take standard flash memory for expansion (something that should have been done long ago, screw these damn proprietary memory cards).
It works with quite a few monitors actually. At a LAN party a while back I hooked up 6 Xboxes on 5 TVs. The front screen had a second machine running rear view in PIP and there were two off to each side. We were trying to get a 7th box in there to run a spectator-cam view, but we ran out of copies of the game (3 legit copies, only 3 modchipped xboxes, so only 6 could run it).