Some 17-year-olds I know have vast music collections but have yet to purchase their first CD.
(okay, you can stop pretending now)
Fair enough, but I know of a 42-year-old who has bought hundreds of pieces of music over his lifetime, but only has about 20 in his possession right now.
Lets see... there were 120+ albums that became nostalgia pieces when CD's hit the mainstream. Various CD's that got scratched or broken. Cassettes that met a sad demise in a hot car in the Texas sun. 8-Tracks... hell, we won't even talk about them.
Point being, the music industry keeps insisting that I'm not buying the actual music, just a limited license to listen to said music. Fine, but in that case I'm going to insist that I own that license forever, regardless of whether or not I still own the physical medium the music was recorded on. As long as I didn't give it away or resell it, it's still mine.
Until the music industry offers to replace all this stuff for free when it breaks or wears out, I'm going to keep hitting the P2P networks to get copies of the stuff I've already paid for.
I agree. D3 won't run nearly as well on an XBox, and trying to play a FPS with a videogame controller is an exercise in frustration.
But D3 is going to be a huge game, and is going to attract a much wider audience then the typical first person shooter. A lot of those people aren't going to know that the XBox version is inferior, or they won't really care. They'll see it strictly as a question of buying an XBox or trying to figure out what new hardware they'll need to run the PC version. Most of them will probably take the safe way out and pick up an XBox.
Well, the article *does* quote Carmack as saying that Microsoft is offering Id a boatload of money to sit on the PC release of D3 until they've got an XBox port ready for release at the same time. Seems to me that thats one of the more significant news bits in the story, along with Carmacks musings that he might be out of a job soon.
I guess Microsoft figures a lot of gamers will be upgrading their hardware when D3 comes out. If the XBox version is ready at the same time, those gamers might decide to buy themselves an XBox instead of sinking $300 into another new video card.
Sure it can. It all depends on how much money Microsoft is willing to throw at iD. If we're talking billions, then it suddenly makes very good business sense to scrap all that R&D and make Doom 3 an XBox only game.
I don't think it's going to happen, but what if MS goes to Id and says "How much money do you want to make D3 an Xbox exculsive", and Id quotes them an outrageous figure, and MS writes out the check?
One thing I've noticed about my own music buying habits over the past 25 years. The amount of music I'm buying has stayed relatively constant. But the type of music I'm buying lately has shifted radically, away from the more popular bands and towards the less-appreciated ones.
Popular music is relatively easy to find on the p2p networks. Type in "Eminem" or "Korn" and you'll come up with hundreds of hits. Downloading and burning a CD is easy. Why go through the hassle of ordering online or driving to the mall when downloading is simpler and cheaper?
The less popular stuff is a lot harder to obtain. Usually I can find a song or two, enough to make me know I want to hear more, but finding the more obscure stuff is an exercise in frustration. It could take me hours or days of searching and downloading and listening to locate all the tracks I want. In that case, it's a lot easier to just break out the plastic and order the CD.
From a Karma standpoint, I'd much rather spend my money supporting a struggling artist then helping Christine or Britney put another platinum album on their wall. I understand the legally, pirating is pirating, and it doesn't matter whose music I steal. But Paul McCartney isn't going to have to take a second job because I ripped "Help!" instead of buying it.
I think this is what the RIAA members are really worried about. Not that music sales will drop, but that they'll be spread out a lot more evenly. Once an artist gets popular enough, it becomes easy to pirate their music. Sales for those artists will tend to "cap out" when it becomes easier for people to pirate the album instead. Meanwhile, less popular groups will tend to sell more albums, because more people will be exposed to their music. That means more work for the record companies, because they'll have to start promoting ALL of their artists, not just the popular few that they know will sell the most.
Gaming reviews have gone down the toilet since Old Man Murray shut down. That was the only gaming review site I ever needed. Comparing playing a game to "swallowing a dixie cup full of fishhooks" was enough to dissuade me.
This system is just begging to be abused. Lets say a student applys for a part-time job at a local fast food emporioum. The employer has your name, has your SSN, knows where you go to school.. whats to stop them from logging in to check your grades and attendance record? Nothing, it sounds like.
Which raises another interesting question... if a "computer" is actually just a collection of interchangeable parts, and if a licence is bound to one "computer"... which part of that computer is the license bound to? The whole thing? If I swap out the floppy drive, is it now a new computer? What if I rip everything out of the case and replace it with different stuff? What if I take everything out and drop it into a new case so that I'll have more room? What if I upgrade the Mobo and processor and keep everything else?
I just thinking about ways to weasel an OEM licence into a new system... if I take the floppy out of an obsolete computer and drop it into a new system, can I claim that the "computer" the software licences were attached to went transferred along with the floppy drive? Logically of course not, but legally may be another matter.
Maybe he doesn't realize that cans of soda come with a little tab on the top so that they can be easily opened.
Or perhaps the problems is that he's not forsighted enough to purchase his soft drinks when he's at the market buying food and such. I guess if I had to get up and drive to the store every time I wanted a Dr Pepper, I'd think that an in-house soda fountain was a pretty convenient thing, too.
Clearly, there are other factors that have to be considered. I'm remeinded of the sign that's legally required to be posted in every auto and appliance repair shop in the country. I'm talking about the one that establishes a basic hourly rate for repair work, then escalating rates if the customer wants to watch, if they want to help, or (worst case scenario) if they tried to fix it themselves first. I think tha same sort of scale could apply to computer repair.
Some of my in-laws need to park a keg beside their computer desk, and run a hose to my mouth.
Then they need to stand there and pump so I don't have to suck too hard.
(Someone is going to have fun with that last line, and get an easy +5 funny. Consider it my little Karma gift to you)
Having your EMail address on a business card that you hand it is quite different from having your address posted on a website that gets a several thousand visitors a day. Especially when a large perecentage of those visitors aren't huge fans of Microsoft.
I notice *your* email address is obscured by request.
I'm not sure why artists need labels, but I'm also not aware of any acts that have gotten RichAndFamous without a label behind them.
You'd think with the internet and MP3s and the attention span of the American public, some band would have managed to grab their 15 minutes with a little luck and some self-promotion, but I'm not aware of any. It seems that it doesn't matter how good your music is, if you don't have a label promoting you, you won't make it big.
But thats always the justification that cheaters use. They're not doing it to gain an advantage. They're just doing it to "level the playing field", because everyone else cheats already, or has lots more time to play, or has a better computer.
The worst thing about cheating is the climate of distrust it creates. Any time a player gets lucky, or does something unusually skilled, they're quickly accused of cheating and usually booted. Even worse are the "So-and-so is cheating! / No I'm not!" arguments. Once one of those gets started, the games ruined. I spend more time worrying about whether that person is cheating or not then I do playing my own game.
I had a friend who was in a similar situation. He put in a bunch of unpaid overtime over the course of two years, thinking he was an exempt employee and part of the management team. Then the company signed a huge deal and passed out bonuses to the Managers, and he was screwed over.
He contacted the state Labor Board, and they pretty much took the case and did everything for him. He didn't have any time sheets or anything, but the company had records of his security card in/out punches, and the weekly time log he had filled out showing how many hours had been spent per week on each of his projects. That was sufficient, the company paid him his back OT. Which turned out to be about 3 times what his bonus would have been.
Exactly. You insure against catastrophic financial losses. Home. Primary wage earner. Car. Health. The small stuff, like appliances and contact lenses, you don't worry about. It's not worth the cost of insuring.
I don't buy ESP's, and I've only considered it once. I was buying my wife a new digital camera for Christmas a few years ago - this was back when digital cams were new and expensive and cool. CompUSA offered me a 3 year extended warranty, and I thought "You know, in 2 1/2 years, this camera is going to be soooooo obsolete. If it were to break, somehow, they'd probably just replace it with a much better newer model."
Then I pondered cool ways to "break" it without being obvious and voiding the warranty, and by then it was rung up and I was walking out the door.
Sure, if the kid doesn't want to be monitored, the system won't work. The target audience is parents of younger kids, kids who don't plan on doing anything after school and don't mind their parents keeping an electronic eye on them.
Of course, the problem comes when your kid gets old enough to decide he doesn't want to be monitored any more. That'll be an interesting discussion with the parents.
But what if the police don't pick up the number for some reason? In that case, you just spent a bunch of money posting advertisements for your competitor.
We've got a similar problem here. Every telephone pole in town is covered with a bunch of signs advertising weight loss/appliance repair/whatever. My favorites are the one that say "Home Internet Business! Make up to $200 a day!". They're invariably hand-written with black marker on a torn piece of cardboard.
Slashdot Mirror
But it IS new!
And improved!
Says so right there!
It's a "featured site". Meaning it's a site from Microsoft, a Microsoft partner, or someone who paid some money to Microsoft for the privilege.
Nothing that other search sites don't do. They just mark their paid adverts a little more obviously.
You're having trouble finding porn now?
(pretend the following is in italics)
Some 17-year-olds I know have vast music collections but have yet to purchase their first CD.
(okay, you can stop pretending now)
Fair enough, but I know of a 42-year-old who has bought hundreds of pieces of music over his lifetime, but only has about 20 in his possession right now.
Lets see... there were 120+ albums that became nostalgia pieces when CD's hit the mainstream. Various CD's that got scratched or broken. Cassettes that met a sad demise in a hot car in the Texas sun. 8-Tracks... hell, we won't even talk about them.
Point being, the music industry keeps insisting that I'm not buying the actual music, just a limited license to listen to said music. Fine, but in that case I'm going to insist that I own that license forever, regardless of whether or not I still own the physical medium the music was recorded on. As long as I didn't give it away or resell it, it's still mine.
Until the music industry offers to replace all this stuff for free when it breaks or wears out, I'm going to keep hitting the P2P networks to get copies of the stuff I've already paid for.
I agree. D3 won't run nearly as well on an XBox, and trying to play a FPS with a videogame controller is an exercise in frustration.
But D3 is going to be a huge game, and is going to attract a much wider audience then the typical first person shooter. A lot of those people aren't going to know that the XBox version is inferior, or they won't really care. They'll see it strictly as a question of buying an XBox or trying to figure out what new hardware they'll need to run the PC version. Most of them will probably take the safe way out and pick up an XBox.
I'm sure the security experts are much smarter then the hackers.
Well, the article *does* quote Carmack as saying that Microsoft is offering Id a boatload of money to sit on the PC release of D3 until they've got an XBox port ready for release at the same time. Seems to me that thats one of the more significant news bits in the story, along with Carmacks musings that he might be out of a job soon.
I guess Microsoft figures a lot of gamers will be upgrading their hardware when D3 comes out. If the XBox version is ready at the same time, those gamers might decide to buy themselves an XBox instead of sinking $300 into another new video card.
http://www.cool-2b-real.com/
See if you can figure out who sponsers it!
(I gotta figure out how to post links as links someday)
Theoretically, Id could release D3 as an XBox exclusive and still license the engine for PC games.
The games not even in beta for the PC yet. And Id isn't exactly a large company. I doubt they've spent any time testing D3 for other systems.
Er, yeah. That's called "business". Happens all the time.
Sure it can. It all depends on how much money Microsoft is willing to throw at iD. If we're talking billions, then it suddenly makes very good business sense to scrap all that R&D and make Doom 3 an XBox only game.
I don't think it's going to happen, but what if MS goes to Id and says "How much money do you want to make D3 an Xbox exculsive", and Id quotes them an outrageous figure, and MS writes out the check?
One thing I've noticed about my own music buying habits over the past 25 years. The amount of music I'm buying has stayed relatively constant. But the type of music I'm buying lately has shifted radically, away from the more popular bands and towards the less-appreciated ones.
Popular music is relatively easy to find on the p2p networks. Type in "Eminem" or "Korn" and you'll come up with hundreds of hits. Downloading and burning a CD is easy. Why go through the hassle of ordering online or driving to the mall when downloading is simpler and cheaper?
The less popular stuff is a lot harder to obtain. Usually I can find a song or two, enough to make me know I want to hear more, but finding the more obscure stuff is an exercise in frustration. It could take me hours or days of searching and downloading and listening to locate all the tracks I want. In that case, it's a lot easier to just break out the plastic and order the CD.
From a Karma standpoint, I'd much rather spend my money supporting a struggling artist then helping Christine or Britney put another platinum album on their wall. I understand the legally, pirating is pirating, and it doesn't matter whose music I steal. But Paul McCartney isn't going to have to take a second job because I ripped "Help!" instead of buying it.
I think this is what the RIAA members are really worried about. Not that music sales will drop, but that they'll be spread out a lot more evenly. Once an artist gets popular enough, it becomes easy to pirate their music. Sales for those artists will tend to "cap out" when it becomes easier for people to pirate the album instead. Meanwhile, less popular groups will tend to sell more albums, because more people will be exposed to their music. That means more work for the record companies, because they'll have to start promoting ALL of their artists, not just the popular few that they know will sell the most.
Gaming reviews have gone down the toilet since Old Man Murray shut down. That was the only gaming review site I ever needed. Comparing playing a game to "swallowing a dixie cup full of fishhooks" was enough to dissuade me.
Come back, Chet!
This system is just begging to be abused. Lets say a student applys for a part-time job at a local fast food emporioum. The employer has your name, has your SSN, knows where you go to school.. whats to stop them from logging in to check your grades and attendance record? Nothing, it sounds like.
Which raises another interesting question... if a "computer" is actually just a collection of interchangeable parts, and if a licence is bound to one "computer"... which part of that computer is the license bound to? The whole thing? If I swap out the floppy drive, is it now a new computer? What if I rip everything out of the case and replace it with different stuff? What if I take everything out and drop it into a new case so that I'll have more room? What if I upgrade the Mobo and processor and keep everything else?
I just thinking about ways to weasel an OEM licence into a new system... if I take the floppy out of an obsolete computer and drop it into a new system, can I claim that the "computer" the software licences were attached to went transferred along with the floppy drive? Logically of course not, but legally may be another matter.
Maybe he doesn't realize that cans of soda come with a little tab on the top so that they can be easily opened.
Or perhaps the problems is that he's not forsighted enough to purchase his soft drinks when he's at the market buying food and such. I guess if I had to get up and drive to the store every time I wanted a Dr Pepper, I'd think that an in-house soda fountain was a pretty convenient thing, too.
Clearly, there are other factors that have to be considered. I'm remeinded of the sign that's legally required to be posted in every auto and appliance repair shop in the country. I'm talking about the one that establishes a basic hourly rate for repair work, then escalating rates if the customer wants to watch, if they want to help, or (worst case scenario) if they tried to fix it themselves first. I think tha same sort of scale could apply to computer repair.
Some of my in-laws need to park a keg beside their computer desk, and run a hose to my mouth.
Then they need to stand there and pump so I don't have to suck too hard.
(Someone is going to have fun with that last line, and get an easy +5 funny. Consider it my little Karma gift to you)
Having your EMail address on a business card that you hand it is quite different from having your address posted on a website that gets a several thousand visitors a day. Especially when a large perecentage of those visitors aren't huge fans of Microsoft.
I notice *your* email address is obscured by request.
I'm not sure why artists need labels, but I'm also not aware of any acts that have gotten RichAndFamous without a label behind them.
You'd think with the internet and MP3s and the attention span of the American public, some band would have managed to grab their 15 minutes with a little luck and some self-promotion, but I'm not aware of any. It seems that it doesn't matter how good your music is, if you don't have a label promoting you, you won't make it big.
But thats always the justification that cheaters use. They're not doing it to gain an advantage. They're just doing it to "level the playing field", because everyone else cheats already, or has lots more time to play, or has a better computer.
The worst thing about cheating is the climate of distrust it creates. Any time a player gets lucky, or does something unusually skilled, they're quickly accused of cheating and usually booted. Even worse are the "So-and-so is cheating! / No I'm not!" arguments. Once one of those gets started, the games ruined. I spend more time worrying about whether that person is cheating or not then I do playing my own game.
I had a friend who was in a similar situation. He put in a bunch of unpaid overtime over the course of two years, thinking he was an exempt employee and part of the management team. Then the company signed a huge deal and passed out bonuses to the Managers, and he was screwed over.
He contacted the state Labor Board, and they pretty much took the case and did everything for him. He didn't have any time sheets or anything, but the company had records of his security card in/out punches, and the weekly time log he had filled out showing how many hours had been spent per week on each of his projects. That was sufficient, the company paid him his back OT. Which turned out to be about 3 times what his bonus would have been.
Exactly. You insure against catastrophic financial losses. Home. Primary wage earner. Car. Health. The small stuff, like appliances and contact lenses, you don't worry about. It's not worth the cost of insuring.
I don't buy ESP's, and I've only considered it once. I was buying my wife a new digital camera for Christmas a few years ago - this was back when digital cams were new and expensive and cool. CompUSA offered me a 3 year extended warranty, and I thought "You know, in 2 1/2 years, this camera is going to be soooooo obsolete. If it were to break, somehow, they'd probably just replace it with a much better newer model."
Then I pondered cool ways to "break" it without being obvious and voiding the warranty, and by then it was rung up and I was walking out the door.
Oh well.
Sure, if the kid doesn't want to be monitored, the system won't work. The target audience is parents of younger kids, kids who don't plan on doing anything after school and don't mind their parents keeping an electronic eye on them.
Of course, the problem comes when your kid gets old enough to decide he doesn't want to be monitored any more. That'll be an interesting discussion with the parents.
But what if the police don't pick up the number for some reason? In that case, you just spent a bunch of money posting advertisements for your competitor.
We've got a similar problem here. Every telephone pole in town is covered with a bunch of signs advertising weight loss/appliance repair/whatever.
My favorites are the one that say "Home Internet Business! Make up to $200 a day!". They're invariably hand-written with black marker on a torn piece of cardboard.